‘I don’t think so.’ She did, but she went close up, so the baby wasn’t part of the shot. Leonie had looked thoughtful, serene, when she framed the shot, but by the time Vee pressed the shutter she had realised she was being watched and was glaring straight into the lens. Some you catch, some get away. Leonie will never see the photo, so she doesn’t need to know.

‘Good,’ Leonie says, with a slightly disbelieving look in her eyes that Vee knows she deserves.

‘I saw Bea. It’s been years.’

‘She said the same about you,’ Leonie says, ‘we were saying how you’d changed.’

Vee knows this is a dig but she doesn’t need to let it touch her. ‘Well, haven’t we all? But yes, I probably had further to come than the rest of you.’ She runs her hand over her head, feeling the hair so short and sharp against her hand, and thinks of how when she came to see the strike at Dagenham she still slept in rollers, and sprayed the waves in her hair solid every morning. A willing party to her own oppression, in those days. She was sleepwalking, really, apart from that little curious corner of her heart that was sufficiently awake to want to see what was going on at the Ford machinists’ strike. ‘I wasn’t exactly assertive.’

Leonie laughs, but it’s a kind sound, a recognition. ‘You weren’t the only one. There are thousands of women, now, still, not asserting themselves’ – she winds down the window, lights a cigarette from the remains of the pack Bea gave her – ‘but the fact is, you can’t be a woman in this world and not be assertive. Unless you’re going to just accept your oppression and go and lie down under some man, have his baby and give up on yourself.’

Dagenham-Vee would have eaten this up, but Greenham-Vee ponders before replying, ‘You’re presupposing a lot about men, there.’

‘I just spent half an hour talking to Tanya. She used to be all for slashing tyres. Now she’s leaking milk from both tits and talking about peaceful protest.’

Vee laughs, ‘That’s not a man’s fault, though, is it? That’s Tanya. She once told me I was letting myself down because I didn’t want to go to some workshop she was running. I think it was about masturbation.’

‘Probably. She’s always been all about the cunt. Which is great, you know. You have to choose your . . . battleground.’