JEN: I think it was on her mind to. Money was always a big concern for us. To secure more money you need to prove impact, but how can you ask for money for impact that isn’t supposed to be happening? Of course, we did a lot, just the two of us, from our base at college. But we needed more leverage than that. Thank God for Inga.

Inga Stenbridge’s glorious ascent happened after Jen, newly installed as Chair of Archipelago Women’s Studies, began giving free evening lectures in gender politics. Inga, island-born, was working in the council’s sustainability department. She signed up, came along, they became friends. Or rather, Jen took her up. Inga – young, pretty, clever, local – had just the right profile.

At the inquiry, when Colin Grieves described the meetings that took place at Harcourt House as ‘nothing less than a witches’ coven’, all the women present – those who knew Eva, and witnessed her at work with Jen and Inga – will have recalled for themselves the pleasure and excitement writ across the faces of those women: their optimism, palpable as the flick of a dolphin’s fin, as they glimpsed their collective potential.

The first time Zoe met Inga it was a summer evening at Harcourt House. Zoe was sitting upstairs in the library, at the new grownup desk that Eva had prepared for her, under the window, among the leather-bound books with golden writing on the spines, amid the mushroom-smell of venerable texts that nobody ever opened, when she heard voices from the kitchen.

The door opened: it was Eva, coming in to tell her that she had a guest, and wouldn’t be able to drop her home.

‘Can you walk,’ she said, ‘or shall I ask Ruth to stop by and collect you?’

‘I’ll walk,’ Zoe said.

‘Come and meet my new friend,’ Eva said, and led her downstairs.

Jen and Inga were already halfway through a bottle of red wine. Jen’s cheeks were pink; voices were raised in drunken excitement; even the mutton-stew-scented steam rising from the Aga seemed to wreathe the room in collusion. Zoe stopped in the doorway. Inga was leaning against the kitchen sink, glass in hand, and wearing such high-heeled shoes that it occurred to Zoe to ask what they were for, exactly. She was too shy to say anything. But she knew who Inga was. Inga was Mx Thompson’s girlfriend.

ZOE: I didn’t need to speak. The three of them were always talking.