INGA: In her mitigation, she was granted this privilege suddenly; she didn’t grow up expecting it, as men have done for centuries. Therefore, I am pleased to say, that when privilege came her way, she didn’t waste it.

ALICE: She discovered her mission midway through her life, and it drove her. I don’t think she stopped to question the notion, once it became apparent. That was always how she spoke of it, each time I interviewed her. She knew we were running out of time.

TARA: When she was younger, she went to hear Greer speak. That was before she left London. She saw herself as one of those canaries Greer writes about. She wrote in her notebook that it made her feel guilty and pathetic and weak, listening to a catalogue of all the mistakes she had made as a woman.

A canary. Poor Eva.

ZOE: It had always been difficult between my two families. My grandmother, Eva, in the big house. My mother didn’t like it. But even she came round to Eva in the end. After Eva disappeared, unfortunately.

In the evenings, or early mornings, when Zoe and Eva lay together in her big airy bedroom, reading picture books, then chapter books, then the morning papers and weekly magazines, the love flowed between them, swirling and unstoppable. It was the calmest and strongest of loves, grandmother–granddaughter, no worries, none of that deep anxiety of mothers, creative, happy, trusting. Eva would talk, Zoe would listen, occasionally turning her eyes to the black-and-white photograph of the Sarajevo women which hung there – Jewish women, Eva would say, like you and me. Zoe listened to everything her grandmother told her, about what had always been, and what had been suppressed, about what should happen, and what might come in the way. Eva wanted her to see for herself how high the stakes, how wide the scope, how tiny the chance.

Then Zoe would take her time answering back.

Cwen thought she was going to be left alone, for a thousand years. Now she knows this isn’t so, and mostly she is interested in having her isolation ended. She has lain very still. She has let the birds make their nests in her hollows. She has felt the lobsters burrow into her thighs, and crabs scuttle landward between her fingers and toes. She has waited through rain and hailstorms, snow and sun, and those effervescent love-children of the weather, called rainbows. She has felt Sun warm her skin, and her touch dry seawater saltwhite in her hair. She has lain here, alone, for absolutely fucking aeons.

Now, though, people are coming. She knows there are things she can give them. There is still so much they do not know.