Erica puts the medication boxes down next to Vee, and goes to the kitchen and pours a glass of water. Vee nods her thanks, takes the glass with a slightly shaking hand, and swallows some tablets with a practised jerk of the head. She steadies herself with a palm on the back of a dining chair, closes her eyes. ‘I don’t know whether my headaches ever go,’ she says, ‘or whether I’m just so used to them that I stop noticing.’

‘This one doesn’t seem as bad as the day we went to the gallery,’ Erica offers.

There’s almost a smile from Vee. ‘That wasn’t a headache. That was – an assault.’ The first assault of her last war. She puts a finger to her temple, gently, as though the very skin of her face is tender.

Erica is still standing; she isn’t sure what will happen now. She could go to the march on her own, of course she could. She’s not a child. But she doesn’t want to do it without Vee. She says, ‘Thank you for letting me look at the photos.’

‘What did you think of them?’

Maybe because Vee sounds as though she doesn’t care, or because her eyes are still closed, it’s easy for Erica to be honest. ‘I thought my aunt looks hostile in a lot of them. She seems to be spoiling for a fight.’

The fraction of a nod from Vee, the foreshadowing of a smile. ‘And does that surprise you?’

‘Not really. Like I said, I know her mainly by reputation. And her writing. Which was – is – pretty uncompromising.’

‘Hmm.’ It’s half-sigh, half-question.

In the peace of this room, talking becomes irresistible. Plus, Erica doesn’t really want to think about what those pills mean. ‘Her essay on abortion, in particular. Not the column, the piece in her book. That made me think. She was very clear. That it’s only a transaction. No more important than having a tooth out.’

Vee doesn’t give any sign that she’s listening. She doesn’t speak. And Erica can’t stop. ‘I remember when I was first pregnant. My mother died eighteen months before and it was only a year after we got married. It was so emotional. Leonie wrote rationally about abortion. It made me see how irrationally we think about babies. I can see why people wouldn’t like that kind of – of forthrightness.’ Erica herself had put down the iPad she was reading Leonie’s book on, her hand shaking, and looked across at Tom, who was sleeping on the sofa, battened in by cushions so he didn’t roll off and hurt himself, his perfect shells of ears sticking through the straight, soft hair that she cannot bear to have cut. She’d wondered whether, if she hadn’t had him, she might be less unhappy.