Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin met by chance in 1986 at the office of Dr. Laura Simon, a gynaecologist with a practice in New Cross, southeast London (opposite the New Cross tube station, next to a Turkish-Cypriot barbershop run by Feridun Kanli, a distant relative of Tracey's on her mother's side and Charalambos Sergiou's personal barber during his six years of study in London).
The two artists were in the waiting room of the doctor's conservatively decorated office with the usual poster of a pregnant woman and "no-smoking" sign on the wall, when suddenly, a pregnant woman in her eighth month burst in, bleeding heavily. Panicked, the girls called for the doctor and helped move her into the examination room, where she delivered a healthy baby girl on the spot.
The woman, however, died shortly after giving birth, a death that extensive police investigation and forensics revealed to be suicide. No one claimed the infant and no relatives could be traced, so Sarah Lucas adopted the little girl. These events were not made public until 2006. It seems that with the two artists' successes, the good Dr. Simons felt that, as a matter of historical record, the story should be sold to the press. After the story came out (The Guardian, Wednesday, 15 November 2006, Jonathan Jones), there was no reason why Sarah Lucas' installation, Is Suicide Genetic? / 86 Should I Worry?, made in 1996 but never publicly shown, should remain in the dark.