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From there, she moved into a beautiful Georgian Grade II-listed house in Canonbury, where she lived with her late partner, the writer Clive Sinclair. ‘It was spread across four floors, but it was really quite dinky because about a third of it was stairs,’ she explains. ‘We never felt it was a good idea for both of us to work from there.’ She rented studios, although never quite found the right one and ended up moving about 10 times. Her daughter, Rachel – a singer by profession but also a gifted artist – even created a miniature model out of card of what she thought was her mother’s dream studio, with soaring ceilings, windows aplenty and goats in the garden.
Everything changed in 2018 when Clive died after a battle with cancer. Haidee contemplated moving to a house where she could both live and paint, but it was a tough and painful time – in fact it was one of the few times in her life where she was completely unable to paint – and she felt a move might be too much. And then, in a case of improbable timing, an estate agent got in touch with a house in Newington Green that he thought might work. ‘I remember telling him that it was a ridiculous idea, and then I saw the house,’ recalls Haidee. ‘My daughter Rachel came with me and she looked at me and just said “I think this is it”.’ Lovingly cared for, it had been extended by its previous owners and was quite Bauhaus in spirit.
