The writer Jenni Fagan and the actor Samantha Morton have not met one another until today and there is, from the start, a sense of occasion – as if they were destined to be friends. They are together in London, on a sultry August afternoon, because of a book: Fagan’s extraordinary, harrowing and uplifting memoir, Ootlin, about growing up in the Scottish care system. It has drawn Morton in Fagan’s direction because, when she read it, it spoke to her personally – as she is keen to explain.
They sit down, at right angles to one another, in an upstairs room in a Soho club. Fagan is dressed in black; even her nails are black – goth chic or a souvenir of having once been a singer in 90s punk bands. She wears a turquoise bracelet that could double as a string of worry beads, and has beautiful eyes: blueish-green, dancing, observant. Morton is dressed in a linen trouser suit, and her warm, eager, unmade-up face is turned towards Fagan’s. Two women – in black and white – talking as if they had known one another for ever.
