‘That’s something,’ Erica sounds unsure. ‘Did you – has it been a good ten years?’

Vee laughs. (Is she laughing more? Is that a change? Does it matter? No. So long as her eyes keep working, nothing matters.) ‘I didn’t find a new gratitude for life. I tried. I travelled again. I got into . . .’ Oh, what’s the word, what’s the word? Stupid, stupid tumour. ‘Philosophy. No. Not that. I gave money to things. Set up some funds, some prizes.’

‘Philanthropy,’ Erica offers.

‘Yes.’ Her tongue doesn’t want to go around the word; she doesn’t make it try. If she has to lose something before she dies, let it be words.

‘I haven’t read anything about that.’

‘It’s all anonymous,’ Vee says. At least she has still got some vocabulary.

Erica nods. ‘I’m sorry, Vee.’ She is wiping tears from her eyes, in that ridiculous way that women wearing mascara do, looking up and sliding her finger along the skin under her bottom lashes.

*

Erica had suspected, of course she had. The headaches, the swinging moods, the drugs, the objections to noise and light – they were always going to add up to this, if she had chosen to do the maths.

And yet Vee seems so calm, holding it all in or dealing with it or whatever she is doing. She is striding ahead down the street, looking for all the world like – well, like someone who doesn’t have a brain tumour. Although, close up, there’s a sallowness to her skin that Erica should have noticed, a dullness in her eyes that doesn’t speak to health. If Tom looked like that, Erica would be torn between putting him to bed and taking him to the doctor. A cold shudder runs through her at the very thought of her baby with a brain tumour.

Vee walks much faster than Erica. Maybe Erica needs DMs instead of these stupid boots, which she had thought might make her feel like a woman again, rather than a chewed-up mother. She could probably do with being more like Vee.

*

The cafe is noisy: a hissing, bean-rattling coffee machine, chatter, a baby half-crying, and wood floor bouncing the sound around.

‘You sit down,’ Erica says.

Vee nods. ‘I’d like a coffee and a cheese scone. I can’t remember when I last had a cheese scone.’

‘What sort of coffee?’

‘Coffee.’

Erica orders two flat whites and two cheese scones. Three weeks ago she would have been worried about eating a scone, because there’s still half a stone of baby weight she hasn’t lost. But the march changed her. Vee is changing her, Leonie’s words are changing her. She’s done with worrying about the calories in a cheese scone.