‘Sorry,’ Piotr called, as the voice disappeared, then started up again, quieter but still audible. Eva held her arm out, offering Holly the chance to walk ahead of her, but Holly shook her head. She waited until Eva had reached the office door and then, slowly, started making her own way down the hall. About halfway along, opposite the vile avocado-green bathroom, she stopped and leaned against the wall, listening.

It was Freida’s voice.

Freida’s voice was talking about how she had written a letter but no one had answered. She sounded frail. She sounded disappointed … But there had been no letters to Holly for decades. Freida had said not to contact her at all. Holly didn’t even have her address! If there was a problem, Freida should have stayed to face it – she should have told Holly what was going on. She’d written a letter? So what! It had never arrived! But where had she been all these years? They were supposed to be on the same side.

But her voice, even so much older, was familiar. Holly could remember the sparkle in her words as she described the pouch – so unlike anything the men would have come up with, she’d said, laughing. I’ll make it soft and warm. No sterile containers and coloured fluids, no uniform pods – I’ll make it personal, she’d said. And she had. Everyone experienced the pouch individually, everyone knew how personal it was – the love saw to that. The love you felt for your baby in the pouch was acutely intimate.

And here was Freida’s voice, saying she thought the foundation of FullLife was a mistake – the whole company – implying she regretted giving away her patent, the patent that she had left to Holly, for the family. Freida had never wanted money, Holly knew that, and Holly had needed it then. She’d thought it was an act of generosity. But now Freida’s voice was complaining that Holly cared more about her family than her.

And then there was Freida’s voice, going on about those tropical fish again, and Freida’s voice, describing a collection of burned gorse – is that what she did now, Holly thought, had she given up one of the most important careers in a century, walked away leaving a technology that she knew was flawed, that had hurt Rosie, so she could collect useless scraps of wood and obsess about sea bass and supermarket deliveries?

There is no greater patriarchy than London.

‘It was Jean Rhys,’ said Eva, replying to Freida’s question as though she were right there.