And now they’re both laughing, and the years have slid away from them. They’re in the Fulham flat, the windows open to the blazing summer of ’76, and Leonie is taking the mickey out of some hapless man who tried to explain economics to her. They’re in Vee’s first car, driving back from a demo in Leeds, and Leonie is drinking but not drunk and they have the radio on, and they’re trying to count all the sexist references in songs and it should be depressing but it’s funny, so funny, because they are repeating them in deepened voices. They’re friends, again, and for all the places where it hurts and goes wrong and they have let each other down, they cannot, in this moment, argue with the fact that they chose each other, keep on choosing. When the picture editor called to book Vee for this shoot, she let slip that Leonie asked for Vee to do it. Vee moved two other jobs to be here. She’s never stood in this room before and yet she’s home.

‘What’s so funny?’ The voice makes them both jump. There’s a child standing in the doorway. She is looking from Leonie to Vee, ready to smile, ready to frown, depending on what the grown-ups do next. She has the stance of someone who does not want to be sent away.

Leonie’s laughter barely falters: she can’t seem to stop it. But Vee straightens up, as though it’s not a child but a teacher who has walked into the room and caught her misbehaving.

Maybe if she had met Erica’s father, she would see his contours in the face of this kid. But it’s all Leonie, writ small, in this child’s eyes, that nose, the jut of the chin.

Vee’s first thought is that Leonie kept her baby after all – it wouldn’t be the first time a plan for adoption had fallen through, and a mother had changed her mind. And it would be typical of Leonie to try to keep it quiet if that had happened, because it didn’t exactly go with her ‘maternal instinct as product of the patriarchy’ line.

But this is not a child mothered by Leonie Barratt. That child wouldn’t be wearing a pink ra-ra skirt, or have her hair held back with hair-slides, her feet in cherry-red patent-leather shoes. Leonie’s child would be one step up from feral, wild-haired, sharp-eyed, and more than a match for anyone who put her down.

Of course. This kid must be Ursula’s. Vee hopes that this child has cars as well as dolls to play with. She cannot begin to imagine how seeing this conditioning happening, in her family, under her nose, must gall Leonie. ‘Who’s this?’

‘This is Erica,’ Leonie says, then adds, ‘did you ever read Fear of Flying?’