Oddly enough, it had been Augustin who had helped me through that. My old art teacher who had been so tough on me in that term at the Paris School now became my greatest champion. At least once a week we would Skype each other and I would show Augustin what I was working on and he would critique my efforts, make suggestions and look over my virtual shoulder with the kind of clarity only an experienced artistic eye could provide.

My paintings continue to be large format, big oils on canvas, and since there was no way I could paint like that in our tiny flat, Dad helped me to rent an old garage space that had once been a car mechanic’s, two streets along from our place in Brixton. It turned out there was quite a cool artistic community there, and I had other painters and people making films who were right next door. I paid for it myself, using some of my artist’s portion of the auction price of the work that had sold at Lucie’s. I hadn’t realised at the time that, while the auction was for the college, the artist got ten per cent of the sale price at auction that day and for me that was twenty thousand euros!

I sold a few more works after that too. My bank account had all these zeros – or at least it did for a while. I’d spent a lot of it coming home from France. I had something very important to bring back with me, but I’ll get to that story soon enough …

The Serpentine Gallery has always been one of my favourite places in all of London. When I used to come here to Hyde Park with Dad to work on those early paintings of horses, we’d often buy an ice cream and go and sit beside the attractive brick building and look out across the lake. It cost money to go inside, but sometimes if there was an exhibition of an artist Dad thought I would really like, then we’d pay the entry fee and go in.

This afternoon, though, I didn’t have to pay an entry fee. Because I was the artist. And this was the opening of my show. The guests spilled out on to the lawns outside the pavilion as we approached and there were waiters pouring out glasses of champagne and handing around platters of fancy snacks. It was like the most glamorous garden party ever, and standing in the crowd, being more glamorous than any of them, was a woman in a gold leopard print gown with outrageous flowing red hair.

“Petite Anglaise!” Nicole Bonifait gave me a wave and strode across the lawn towards us with this wide smile. Behind her, Françoise, who had been prowling the platters of food, grabbed three puff pastries and raced behind her mother to join us.