Vee laughs, although it hurts her head and she’s nauseous, as she has been non-stop for the last three days. ‘He’s going to sleep? All the way in the car, all the time we’re there, the drive back? I don’t know much about children but I do know that’s not likely.’ She looks at the child through the window. It’s chilly, standing in the street, but she doesn’t want to get into the passenger seat because that will be a commitment. Tom looks back at her, his expression somewhere between boredom and contempt. It doesn’t look as though he fancies this road trip much, either. Well, that’s something.

‘Vee,’ Erica says. She looks not unlike Tom, the tiredness/frustration on her face forming much the same expression as the boredom/contempt on his.

‘I wish your generation didn’t feel they had to apologise all the time,’ Vee says, and she gets in and tries not to slam the door. Erica’s not an idiot, and so she hopes that she wouldn’t have suggested this if she couldn’t make it work. And Vee likes her, for herself, as well as for the Leonie in her. Still, she doesn’t want to think about what might happen to her head if the child starts crying.

Since the riverside dizziness, which wiped her out for forty-eight hours, she has barely left the house, and seen only Erica and Marja. She’s been sorting through papers and books, clearing out old clothes, taking painkillers whether she thinks she needs them or not. Marja is coming, early this evening, to coax her body to sleepfulness.

Erica gets in to the driver’s seat and slams her door. ‘I’m apologising because your generation thinks working mothers have so much to apologise for.’

It’s raining, only spits and spots, but Erica switches the wipers on to what must be the highest speed, and they thwack back and forth. Vee winces. If Erica notices, she ignores it. Vee thinks of where they are headed: Greenham, the women, the children. ‘You’re right,’ she says, and then, even though twisting around in her seat makes her ache, she looks at the child and says, ‘Good morning.’ Erica starts the engine, and it’s too late for Vee to change her mind.

It’s not too late for her to try to do a bit better, though. ‘Not long now. Until the exhibition,’ she says. ‘Are you pleased with it?’ There was a flurry of last-minute emails a week ago, and now it’s all fixed, finalised, whatever the word is.

Erica smiles, shrugs, sighs, all in one movement. ‘Advance sales are good. They’re going to timed tickets at the weekend. The gallery is happy, everything has gone to the printer, the installation plan’s agreed.’

‘Do you have to do much more?’