Leonie sent her drafts, still, airmail from the American university where she now teaches. In April, Vee had received a proof, and seen herself in the acknowledgements: ‘Thank you to VM, my sister and my friend, who sees everything.’ She’d sat down and read the book, there and then, even though she’d seen its earlier version. But printed like this, it was different. Real. Vee understood, now, what her father meant when he said he was proud of her. She remembers his face, when she told him she’d been approached by a publisher to write a book about photography, a guide for people with their first real camera. (‘I’ll write a book for women with their first real camera’, she’d said.) This winter, her own book has absorbed her free time, and a lot of time she should have given to Stanley. And so when she held Leonie’s book, she knew, more than before, what had gone in to it.

And it’s a feast of a book for anyone who is a Leonie fan, knows her work and her views. Vee can’t say how it will read to someone who has never had the experience of sitting in a room with this clever, uncompromising force of intelligence, felt something like seduced by her words. This Is What You Need To Know About Women (Especially if You Are a Woman) is an abrasive, uncomfortable, unapologetic take on where women should be by now, and all the reasons they are not. Thatcher gets a pasting, which is fair enough, but so does almost everyone else. Women who work, women who don’t, lipstick wearers, closeted lesbians, men who don’t yet understand the whole thing, men who do. And as for feminists: Leonie is unimpressed by them, too, mostly for supporting the patriarchal structure, instead of razing it to the ground, but also for excluding the experience of their sisters of other colours and cultures. Vee enjoyed every word, but Vee knows that Leonie is a blast of cold shower that you know isn’t going to last forever. Anyone who stays under there too long is going to hurt.

A lazy, rippling shrug, but the makings of a smile, too. Leonie can’t hide how pleased she is, and Vee loves her all the more for it. ‘How do polemics ever go? The people who like it are the only ones you don’t need to reach. It’s preaching to the fucking choir.’

‘That’s a shame,’ Vee says. She wishes more people understood the sparkling, bracing humour of Leonie. If you don’t, she could sound vicious.

‘Why?’ Leonie looks half-curious, half-hostile; that means it’s safe to proceed. And it’s a great photo. Click.

‘If people are put off because they feel under attack, they might not understand your message, might not read it—’

‘Then they’re not ready.’