So there we were, my mother and I, sitting on the floor of her bedroom, going through her wardrobe, taking out one item of clothing at a time and recollecting an occasion when we remembered her wearing it. What sticks in my memory now so many years after was how compact her wardrobe was. She didn’t have a lot of clothes, just the key pieces that every woman should have or would need. She owned a capsule wardrobe long before the term became fashionable. Of course we cried, but my word we laughed too. My grandmother was part of a literary set when she lived in Knightsbridge and had hats that would make a modern milner gasp. My mother insisted on putting them on and posing, it was bittersweet, but far more sweet than bitter. And then I spotted it. The coat. The Aquascutum Trench Coat. Together we tried to calculate how many years she’d had it. My mother remembered her buying it in Regent Street when she was a young woman. But what fascinated me the most was how immaculate it was. This was not a coat she saved for Sunday best, my grandmother didn’t really believe in Sunday best, no this was a coat she wore every year, from the start of every spring until the first falling leaves of every autumn.

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