“I’ll look for you, and come across to the street lamp.” It is best to accept what Philip says. He thinks everything through and makes a plan. I guessed that he had discussed this with his mother. To suggest some other arrangement would upset him. “Thank you, PH.”

He smiled. It was our childhood nickname for him. Everyone else who was part of our merry band has gone from the street. I am the only one who sometimes calls him by that name.

It was oddly comforting to have him with me.

He frowned. “You will come out, Kate?”

“Yes. I will come out.”

“And you will come out of this same gate?”

“If they send me out of another gate, I will come round to this one.”

He was satisfied.

Under the watchful eye of the guard, Philip drove away.

As I took the first step towards the prison, a sense of dread swept through me. Perhaps it was to do with the size of the building, the iron gates, or some memory in the air of the thousands of people brought here, heavy with fear and despair.

An earlier version of me might have heard gates clang behind me. When young and marching for the vote, I was with the suffragists. We took part in peaceful demonstrations but not everyone avoided arrest. I knew the experience of imprisonment through the stories of suffragette friends, the brutality and attempts to strip away the self. I had no wish to be a martyr; played my part, but was secretly relieved not to be incarcerated.

I took a deep breath and gave myself a little shake. I walked towards the man on the gate, permit in hand. One more deep breath and I became someone else, a person who will not be cowed by men in uniform, no matter what their rank or station. Nursing experience always stands me in good stead. And I have excellent models among my old suffrage friends, and my family. Women from my mother’s and aunt’s rank in life quite naturally carry an air of authority and entitlement. There is a way of shifting the shoulders and straightening the back.

The gateman had one of those faces that will always look youthful, plump cheeks, pale blue eyes, and strands of fair hair showing beneath his cap.

After a few moments I was taken across a yard towards to what appeared to be a little house. Another uniformed man pointed to a battered chair and asked me to wait. Polite and courteous, but what lies beneath?

After what seemed a day and a half but could not have been more than ten minutes, another officer entered. This man was tall and so cheerful he might have just come up trumps in a sweepstake. The sound of his boots clattered us to the main building. After that, everything merged into an opening and shutting of doors, the turning of keys and endless brightly lit corridors.

One prison officer gave way to another.