How ridiculous, this business with the dress. She remembered it from before – it was a part of the history now. Holly and her bright floral dress. As if that said anything. As if it meant anything.

Her phone started ringing. She stared at the screen, but didn’t answer.

The point was, women should never have had to change anything about themselves. A dress wasn’t going to make it OK that they did. The technology had been invented too soon. It had happened too fast. Like an industrial revolution bringing progress on one hand and destruction on the other.

So there was inequality at work – improve the legislation, and enforce it. That was a much simpler solution than an external womb for heaven’s sake. Why not try that first? It was as if the science had raced past the common sense, past the socio-economics of the problem. If women were being subject to prejudice, denied promotion for having had a child – or for the potential of having a child in the future – then the prejudice should be removed. Obviously.

How was that not obvious to everyone else?

Of course men and women were different. What was wrong with men and women being different? You didn’t need to make them the same, you just needed to treat both with the same respect. When a child was born, men and women should be given equal parental leave, take the same responsibility for raising the child, and so be treated with the same respect. That was how she would have done it, if she’d been able to. Although there were people – her mother included – who thought even that was too far. Why should men get parental leave? she’d say. Let them work, and let us women give birth. We should be paid to raise our children for as long as we want to – and then employers should give us back our jobs at the salary we’d have had if we’d never left.

She could see her mother’s point, but Eva knew some battles were impossible to win. Their society was still based on capitalism, whatever else had changed.

She looked down at the number on her phone. Shook her head. It was the second time he’d called today.

After all these years, she still knew his number. You can delete someone from an address book but you can’t delete them from your memory.