‘Not for me.’ When Erica repeats it, it’s like an incantation. ‘She said that all the time. About everything. Cake? Not for me, I’m watching my weight. Watch a film? Richard Gere’s not for me.’

Erica smiles, and Vee does too. You never know what you’re giving people when you offer them a memory. Or a photograph. ‘They weren’t as different as they thought.’

Erica’s laugh has a taste of sadness to it. ‘Yes. My mother said Leonie was strident.’ She says the word in a tone that shows Ursula didn’t mean it as a compliment. ‘But it never occurred to her that she was, too.’ She sighs, then, with a movement that makes her an inch taller, and a woman rather than a bereaved daughter, asks, ‘Tell me about when you were here with Leonie. How did you see yourselves?’

There’s a second – a mind-trick’s worth of time – where Vee can almost see Leonie here, on that day, hugging an old friend she didn’t expect to see, easing herself down onto the ground, straight into conversation, making a note or two but making it seem as though the interview part of what she was doing was secondary. Later, holding forth, laughing. Leonie was always best with a crowd of other women. If it was a performance, she didn’t know it. She’s sure there was something – something unpleasant – but right now she can’t bring it to mind. ‘She saw herself as right.’

‘Like you?’

‘Me? No, I was just looking.’ Always looking.

Vee’s hands seem colder, these days. But Erica is dressed for spring rather than winter. She hasn’t done up her coat; her blouse is open at the neck. She’s wearing a necklace Vee has seen her in before, an open heart with a chain passing through it. It’s spring, of course. But Vee feels permanently on the cusp of winter. She pulls on her gloves, wondering whether her hands really are cold.

Maybe this is how people come to terms with their deaths. If you cannot trust your senses, if your memory is like your own shadow under a clouded sky, life is all but over. Funny how attached to it it turns out you’ve become, though. Even after thirty-odd years of self-sufficient solitude and a who-cares-anyway attitude.

Erica is looking around, taking everything in as though it’s all happening around her right now. Which it still is, really. ‘Was this place happy? I know it sounds strange, but it feels happy.’

‘There was singing and hugging, if that’s what you mean. But it wasn’t all campfires and tie-dye. And anyway, the women who came weren’t here to enjoy themselves. Feminism then was about liberty and justice, not the right to be happy.’