Erica could also date the photographs, she realises, from Leonie’s size. She’s solid in the 1960s, and then in the early 1970s she’s starting to be – well, it would be called obese now. And still she grows: more chins, more girth, her fingers plump and then fat, the joints disappearing. She looks like Andrea Dworkin, though she came later, Erica is sure, becoming famous after Leonie died. Or is it wrong to equate the two so easily? Not all overweight women look the same, just as all thin women are different. If only it were simple. It should be, by now. That’s clearly what Veronica thinks. She’s right. But saying it should be sorted doesn’t make it so.

There are other things to notice in the photographs: Leonie’s transition from dungarees to men’s shirts and loose trousers; the way Vee rarely took photographs when the subject was looking directly into the lens, preferring to watch them as they watched something else, or were absorbed in action. Erica could write another PhD on Veronica’s photographic decisions. Maybe a book.

‘I think that’s a bit better,’ Vee says, behind her.

Erica wipes her eyes, just to make sure there are no traces of tears, before she turns around.

Vee has dressed – jeans, a white shirt beneath a navy sweater, not very new but made of something (cashmere?) that isn’t meant to ever wear out. She’s wearing socks; her boots are next to a bag at the door, so she must have been planning to come. Despite all this, it seems as though she has not yet put her skin back on. She’s like Tom is in the mornings, when he wants to cuddle, before he sets off to conquer his toddler world. Or Marcus, after sex, when he pulls her in, kisses the top of her head, says something like, it’s not so bad, is it, darling? We’re lucky to have each other, aren’t we? It’s the only time he sounds uncertain; the only time, if she’s honest, that she really actively feels she loves him still. Oh, she knows she does. But feeling it is different.

‘Can I get you anything? Make you some tea?’

Vee closes her eyes, longer than a blink. ‘Water, please,’ she says, then, ‘Damn. I forgot to bring my tablets down. They’re in the bathroom cabinet. Top shelf, white box. Would you mind?’

The cabinet is as neat and tidy as the fridge. There are three boxes of medication on the top shelf, all different. Erica isn’t an expert, but she knows a serious health problem when she sees it. One of the packs is steroids, the other two both prescription painkillers, or at least she thinks they are. A shocked, roiling nausea rises in Erica: she had assumed that Vee was difficult, because – well, because she was that kind of woman.