Among Flatter’s north London neighbours were a young married couple Simeon Alex Chima Onyejiako, a Nigerian law graduate, and his wife Elsa (née Jones), a young opera singer from colonial Trinidad and Tobago. Despite coming from different cultural backgrounds, as intellectuals and activists, Joseph and Simeon shared political common ground, and Elsa was greatly encouraged in her operatic career through her close friendship with Hilda, who became her vocal coach. As fellow émigrés, the Flatters gave the Onyejiakos courage to face uncertainties and to pursue their ambitions as new arrivals in a hostile, often discriminatory environment. Flatter’s portrait of Simeon, created in 1962, captures their close friendship.