‘Not much,’ Erica says, and as soon as she speaks her face finds its usual shape, chin slightly up, the slightest of tilts to the angle of her head. Vee presses the shutter. It’s not a keeper, but Erica didn’t so much as flinch at the sound of it, which is good. And Tom is looking around, half asleep still probably, but obviously used to being photographed. ‘Leonie always seemed a bit scary. I mean, she was big – she was physically big, the biggest person I knew, probably. But . . .’ She glances towards Vee, as though she is forming a question. Vee presses the shutter again, and she’s getting closer to the image she wants to take; there’s something of Leonie in the expression, but there’s Erica’s own intelligence there too, softer than her aunt’s but no less formidable.

‘But?’ Vee prompts.

‘But I used to feel she watched me all the time. Then when I looked at her, she would pretend to be doing something else.’

Vee moves to the side, and somewhere above and behind her the clouds shift and the light is brighter, warmer. Erica turns her head to Vee. ‘I suppose it was because she hated children so much.’ She kisses the top of Tom’s head, as though in apology. ‘She couldn’t be seen to be interested in one.’

‘Did you see much of her?’

‘Not really. Not that I remember. Most of my memories of her must be from the few weeks before she died. She was staying with us while she was back from America. She’d let her own flat. Years afterwards, my mother told me how much she’d missed Leonie when she was teaching in the States, so she insisted she stay with us when she came back. She said she regretted it almost straight away, because it was easier to love Leonie when she was on the other side of the world than when she was in the spare room.’

Erica tries to put Tom down, but he mews and clings. She shifts him to her other hip. He wriggles, and Erica is starting to tense up, so Vee asks, ‘Look at the sculpture?’ Erica does so, a faster move than Vee expected, and there’s the shot: a strand of hair has stuck to her lipgloss, making a dark trail on her cheek, and something about looking at the flame-forms has sharpened her attention, the muscles at the corners of her eyes contracting and her expression both focused and faraway. Vee exhales; her body remembers this feeling, the washing of her senses in relief because there it is, the shot you want, there it always is, but until you find it you are never quite sure that it’s going to show up for you this time. You might have taken your last good photograph. Except you never have.

Well, maybe this time.