She opens her arms. ‘Who else?’

The next hour is a madness of old faces and new, bits of news and catching up. She barely has time to give the finger to a watching squaddie. She’s aware of Vee, lurking and clicking like she does, but she ignores her. Because what could be better than women protecting the planet, women against bombs, women being a fucking force in the world? There are a few men, hangers-on, but they keep out of the way. They know their places. Leonie can see a time, in the future, when it’s all equitable, but what she is hoping for is that the see-saw tips the other way first. Just give them a taste of what it’s like to be second-class citizens. When one of them brings some tea for her, she takes it without saying thank you.

It must be a while since she’s seen Tanya, because she has two children now. She points out the older one, who’s running around with the pack of kids that was always going to come with a camp like this. Well, they may as well be activists. The younger one is a baby still. Tanya and Leonie are soon joined by others, and it’s almost like the old days, when they would sit in the pub after meetings, talking about all that was wrong with the world, all they would do to fix it. Except now it’s fennel tea and what they have done: some things they’ve surprised themselves with, some compromises, progress and a way to go. Leonie has stories from the women’s shelters where she volunteers that make the others wince. They talk about the riots in Toxteth, and the hunger strikes in Northern Ireland. Plus, of course, the possibility of nuclear fucking war, and nobody with a cock seems to want to stop it. ‘That’s unfair,’ a woman Leonie doesn’t know says, ‘my husband’s just as active as I am. And there’s Bruce Kent at CND. He’s doing great things.’

Leonie sighs, because it’s better than snarling. ‘And that’s the argument men use for everything. “Women have come so far. Look, you’ve got Thatcher and Shirley Williams and Esther Rantzen, and the barristers must be in double figures by now. You’ve done it.” ’

‘Leonie,’ Tanya says, ‘I think Jacqui is right. We need to accept men as part of our movement.’