I read on: … So I made the decision to move back to Glasgow, where I was born and brought up. My son and I lived with my parents at first. I found a tiny shop in a part of Glasgow that literally no one ever went to. The place stank. We scrubbed it and fitted it out ourselves, and people liked it. So they kept coming back.

How did I arrive at the Girl Friday style? [Pauses, considers this]. I knew the clothes I wanted to wear myself. I could picture the outfits right down to the braid, the buttons, the finish on a hem. So I made them just like that – not from anyone else’s patterns or designs, but from the pictures in my own head.

I close my laptop, feeling a little overwhelmed, like when you emerge from the cinema having watched a film that’s totally entranced you. Then you step outside the cinema, into the bright sunshine, and it takes a few moments to readjust to the real world.

‘I made them just like that,’ Penny had said, as if she’d been talking about constructing a hedgehog pincushion in needlework class (a project that took me an entire term to mess up; not even my mum could find anything positive to say about it). And I replay Rose’s words from this morning, the gist being: if I don’t want a Menopause Ambassador role, then there’s nothing else she can offer me. At least, nothing new. No promotion, no opportunity in the whole ‘let’s invigorate Flaxico’ mission.

But I don’t need Rose, I decide now, as I go through to the kitchen and unload the washing machine. I don’t have to sit there, year after year, running her errands ‘without fuss’. Penny, Shelley, Isla and Jules are all strong, confident women seemingly unhampered by fear. I might not possess anything like their courage and drive, but I can stand on my own kitchen table, bellowing my lungs out.

I think again about Isla; my quieter friend, who is passionate about the museum where she has worked diligently for so long. Her attention to detail is astounding, her knowledge vast. I know she’ll be heartbroken if the place closes.

She agrees that a fashion event is a brilliant idea, and now I’m convinced that Penny should be involved – not merely as an adviser for a Seventies theme, but as the sole focus of a show. Okay, the museum might not have the resources to stage a major Dior or Frida Kahlo exhibition – but the thrilling thing is, a Girl Friday fashion show has never been done before. It would be unique, focusing solely on the Glasgow girl who sat up half the night, her sewing machine whirring, and was, for a few years in the 1970s, one of the shining lights in British fashion.