"Later that evening, as she walked through a darkened room in the suite, Cooke was waiting for her, at the window, pretending to look out on 118th Street. She didn’t see him as she hurried through. “He reached out and snatched my hand,” she says. “I was startled at first.” She recognised him from the silhouette cast by the light of the street lamps. “Immediately, when I saw it was him, it was like all the fear was gone. When he pulled me close to him and kissed me, hell yeah, I just melted in his arms.” Cooke, who she describes as a “super-super gentleman”, took her under his wing and looked after her, nicknaming her “Chineesy” – after the distinctive eye make-up she still wears that made her look so exotic. Willie John, she says, “didn’t care” that she took up with Cooke as well. “As long as he knew everything going on and he was the boss of it, it was OK with him.” And she was happy to let him think that was the case. Her mother soon moved to New York and took up with Cooke’s brother."