‘Maybe not. But perhaps I could have been her friend. I just thought she was this skinny, morose kid who never smiled, but in my arrogant youth I never really thought to do anything about that. It’s ironic, you know. The other day I was in Geneva protesting the bulldozing of a centre set up to help women, and yet I was too wrapped up in myself back then to help a young girl in my own home.’

‘Well, you can be her friend now. She’s going to need one, that’s for sure.’

‘I know, and I will.’ Evelyne shifted in her seat, took a sip of coffee. ‘We needed the money, you know, and the extra help. It’s not an easy life, farming.’ She paused. ‘But I know that’s not an excuse for how we treated Anna.’

Sylvia said nothing, sensing that Evelyne had more to say.

‘Mother has been writing me letters.’ She laughed, but there was bitterness in it. ‘That’s pretty brave of her really. I can just imagine her waiting until Father has gone down to the cows, and then whipping out her notepad. Scurrying furtively to the post office.’ She shook her head and her smile dropped. ‘Breaking contact with my mother was like collateral damage. She wouldn’t stand up to him, so I had to leave her too. I didn’t want to.’

‘She’s a product of her generation. And so are you – breaking free of all that.’

‘I suppose so.’ Evelyne shrugged. ‘I’ll never forget the moment I understood that things didn’t have to be as I’d been brought up to believe. It was 1969, I was about Anna’s age, or a little older. I heard a report on the radio about a women’s march in Bern, protesting that the government was intending to ratify the European Convention on Human Rights, even though women didn’t yet have the vote! It was unbelievable, as though they didn’t even consider women to be humans with rights.’ She shook her head. ‘The march was led by a woman called Emilie Lieberherr. God, she was a powerful speaker. Equality. Women’s rights. The vote. These weren’t notions I’d heard too often before then, but everything she was saying just made complete sense to me. It was like someone had provided the answer before I even knew I was allowed to ask the question.

‘That was the beginning of the end for my relationship with Dad. And then he didn’t even vote for women’s suffrage in ’71,’ Evelyne laughed. ‘He told me, threw it in my face like a boast. I knew after that, I couldn’t stay. There was simply no middle ground.’

‘Will you ever see them again?’