The contact sheets, roughly A4 size, are on the bottom, and individual prints on top, the four-inch by six-inch ones on top of the five by eight. They aren’t in date order, then: that doesn’t seem like Vee. But when Erica turns over the top photograph – an unremarkable image, a line of women linking arms, no distinguishing features, but her aunt Leonie second from left – she sees a date pencilled lightly on the back, along with an abbreviation that she assumes will make sense to Vee. (‘WLFC’. Women’s Liberation Front Conference? Probably. She’ll check.)

Erica begins by looking at the dates on the back of the images and trying to put them into sequence, but soon she is overtaken by the need to look at the photographs, every one, as fast as she can, her gaze gobbling through them, knowing that she can slow down, later, go back through and examine them properly. But first there is the rush of noticing something in each image, letting her eye lead. Here, she is startled by her aunt’s scowl, her raised hand, as she was obviously being photographed when she didn’t want to be. She understands why people use words like ‘formidable’ with reference to Leonie: here, she seems terrifying. In another – there’s a heart-shock as Erica recognises her mother with her aunt – the sisters are standing in a doorway. Ursula looks as though she’s in charge, Vee having captured the moment where she is talking, Leonie listening, head dropped, meek. There may well be a photograph in Erica’s grandmother’s album of the two girls in childhood, where the same dynamic is visible.

Here is Leonie, in her dungarees, hair tied back with a scarf, jabbing her finger at a man who seems to be confronting her; there are out-of-focus placards in the background. Here, Leonie stands on a table, with a raffia-wrapped bulbous bottle of wine raised high in one hand, mouth open in what has to be a victory cry. In another image, Leonie is slumped in a chair, eyes half closed, mouth half a smile, making a V-sign at the camera. Here, she’s marching: here, her face is caught among others, all looking in the same direction, all listening, focused, waiting. It’s the sort of photograph that makes you hold your breath, and wish you were there, hearing what those women were hearing.