She nodded. That was the plan. Her chest prickled at the thought. A demonstration in the Swiss capital, just before International Women’s Day, was exactly what she needed for her story. If she did it right, maybe she could offload the golden oldies column onto some other poor sod.

‘We don’t exactly have a ton of womanpower here.’ Nina gestured to the table. ‘So if you can write straight and spell, we’ll have you.’

‘She’s a writer, she should be able to manage that,’ Evelyne said.

Nina smiled at Sylvia sideways. ‘Then you’re in.’

She pulled up a chair and grabbed a paintbrush, tasked with writing ‘Marriage is a work contract’ in French across a metre-long banner, wondering, as she did so, what the women here thought of the single diamond on her left hand. Part of her agreed with the banner’s sentiment – for some of her friends, that’s certainly how marriage appeared – but she’d never thought it would be like that with Jim. Jim was different.

They worked for an hour or more, Evelyne refilling their glasses with a regularity Sylvia was more accustomed to seeing from Max and Ellis in El Vino’s wine bar. She thought, briefly, that maybe she shouldn’t be drinking so much, but then dismissed it with a coldness that surprised her. It didn’t feel real, so perhaps it wasn’t. By the time Evelyne emerged from the kitchen with a platter of raw meat and a pot of hot oil, she was feeling heady from booze and paint fumes. The fondue bourguignonne was a Lausanne speciality, they said, but to Sylvia it felt distinctly British; it reminded her of dinner parties her parents would throw when they wanted to impress someone. Her mother in the floor-length dress she pulled out twice a year, a long string of fake pearls and a precious dab of Chanel No. 5, serving up a platter of beef and an assortment of supermarket sauces decanted into individual ceramic pots.

‘God, this must all seem like repeating ancient history to you,’ Nina said. She skewered a piece of meat and placed the long fork in the broth.

‘What do you mean?’

‘All this.’ She waved her hand towards the stack of flyers and banners they’d just prepared. ‘Our struggle, when you’ve got so much already. I mean, abortion is perfectly legal, isn’t it?’

‘Not on demand – you need two doctors’ permission, but essentially yes, since ’67,’ Sylvia said.

‘Here it’s more or less banned, unless you find a doctor with a liberal interpretation of the law, which is impossible in some parts of the country,’ Nina said with a shake of her head. ‘And though contraception is legal, it can be difficult and costly to get hold of, especially in conservative cantons that don’t believe in family planning. So women are screwed either way.’

‘You have paid maternity leave now too, right?’ Sonja asked.