The marchers spread around Trafalgar Square, pooling into the space at the front of the stage and washing out. Vee puts a hand on Erica’s arm – touch is easy, once you start. ‘I’m going to stand at the side,’ she says, ‘where I can get a bit of height. If we get separated, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. Email me tomorrow.’ Erica nods, and looks around – Vee sees her taking in the scale of this, the seriousness of it, with more police lining the space as it fills, and TV cameras in place, recording it all. And she thinks of what Erica’s day to day life is. She does whatever you do with a child, and she lectures, and researches. She is a library-dweller, an only child, and probably a solitary soul, even if she is married. Vee knows what some parts of that are like. ‘Enjoy it,’ she says, with the hope that she sounds reassuring. And then the noise starts to build and build as the first speaker strides onto the stage.

This woman is an actor, well known, who refused to be paid off after being sexually harassed by a director. Even though everyone knows her story – it’s one of the ones that kicked the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements into orbits the world could no longer ignore – something akin to silence rustles over the crowd as she tells her story. The speaker is good – she has the confidence to pause, to let the crowd absorb her words. And they do. More than the noise and the shouts, this is Vee’s favourite part of any event, and it always has been. Her own first march, with Leonie, was smaller in scale than this one – she thinks again of how overwhelmed she would be, if she was Erica right now – and the world was different. But some things haven’t changed. The listening women are focused, still, and their faces show so much power and intelligence, still, and her desire to capture, to record, seems as strong again as it was fifty years ago.