On the day we went to the polls, the rain felt different: a constant warm wetness hanging in the air, monsoon-like and not at all English. Not the drab greyness which London rain generally brought, but instead a strange, close luminosity – a tropical haze in the northern midsummer light. It felt prescient of something.

On the day we went to the polls, train-lines flooded, public transport was over-crowded and sweaty, and I travelled on unfamiliar, looping journeys, viewing the city through the frame of bus windows as though I was watching the opening sequence of a movie set in an attractive foreign capital.

On the day we went to the polls, emotions ran high. Strangers pressed Vote Remain stickers onto me, urging me to cast my vote, and I declared my personal voting decision publicly from my stickered lapel in a way that felt very un-English. On Cheapside, a Remainer campaigned vociferously in a continuous, theatrical monologue, pacing up and down the pavement offering stickers of allegiance. All day I felt a tightness in my throat at the enormity of our collective decision-making.

On the day we went to the polls, I talked about contemporary art with a London dealer of mixed French and Greek origin; I sat in a Turkish cafe looking out onto our multicultural high-street; and I went to bed hoping that the next day I would wake again to a vibrant, cosmopolitan, European city.