Her mum was looking at her, and Holly wondered if somehow she knew already. But she’d been very careful, kept all the paperwork away from the family home. Avoided talking to Freida on the phone. Avoided talking too much to her parents, too, for the last six months. But she didn’t want to carry on like that. She wanted them to know what she was going to do. She wanted them to be proud of her.

‘I’ve applied,’ she said.

‘Applied for what?’ her dad asked.

And Holly found herself rephrasing the truth in her mind, reworking the angle so it would sound different. Sound more palatable, to them.

‘They want to talk to people. People of my age and … To see how we feel about the different designs for the pouches. To be involved.’

But she wanted so much more than that. She wanted to try one out. She wanted to make it possible. She was going to find a better way for women whether her parents could understand it or not.

‘Why?’

‘Because women don’t have equality,’ she said. ‘Because I’m sick of how you sit there and laugh instead of trying out new ideas, or listening to mine.’

Her dad looked like he was about to speak, but she didn’t stop.

‘Because we have to evolve –’ and she knew that her voice was raised now, but she couldn’t stop – ‘because it is unfair the way all this pressure is put on women – the childbirth, the pain, the whole nine months of it. Because it shouldn’t be men doing one thing and women doing another, we should be equals. We should be partners!’

She felt herself looking away from her father, and she felt her own confrontation changing to judgement as she turned her eyes to her mother. Seeing the sadness in her face. Or maybe she was just tired. Or maybe all she wanted to do was avoid another argument. Then she heard the table judder as her dad stood up again – whether to walk away from the fight or project his voice louder she didn’t know. It was only afterwards that she realised what she’d heard though, in the quiet voice to her left. Her mum’s voice that so rarely said what she really thought.

‘Actually, I rather loved giving birth to my children,’ was what she said, though neither Holly nor her dad replied.

‘I won’t allow it,’ was what her dad had said next.