‘No, because mine took me twenty years—’

‘You know I didn’t mean it like that, Leonie.’

‘Oh well that’s OK then.’

Click. ‘Is it?’

‘No. It’s not your job to write books! Just like it’s not my job to take photos.’ Something like pleading sounds in Leonie’s words. ‘Can’t you see?’

‘No, I can’t.’ This is just ridiculous, and Vee doesn’t need it. She’s shaken enough by seeing the living fact of what had seemed a very hypothetical problem of what to do about Leonie’s pregnancy. ‘I was never supposed to get out from under, was that it? I was supposed to be your protégé forever?’

Leonie looks genuinely angry. This isn’t one of her play-furies, one of her tests. She’s moving her face away from the camera every time Vee goes near. Fine. She’ll tell the editor that the film was over-exposed when she took the back off the camera, that the winding mechanism had gone wrong. These things happen. This can be The One Time Veronica Moon Didn’t Nail It. Or she’ll hope there’s something from the first roll of film that she can use, and she’ll hand the specific negatives over, keep the ones of Erica and Leonie private.

‘No,’ Leonie says quietly, ‘but you were supposed to—’

‘What? Come on, tell me.’ Looking down on Leonie is a strange feeling, wrong, like looking at the negative of an image you know well.

Leonie looks down. ‘You were supposed to care.’

Vee turns away, opens her bag in preparation for nuzzling the camera back in to the protective foam that has made a millimetre-perfect nest for it over the years. She picks up her light meter, tucks it back in its slot in her camera bag, ‘You know I care.’

‘How do I know that? From when you cancelled your stupid assignments when I needed you? From all those times you called?’

The guilt that has been filling Vee since Stanley died washes up to its high tide mark, threatening to drown her. She goes over to the chair, kneels on the floor, and leans against Leonie’s knees. ‘I meant to. And I assumed you didn’t want to talk about it.’ It sounds thin, even to her. She tries harder. ‘You’ve never seemed to need me. Or anyone. And anyway – your book. If anyone lives what they believe, it’s you. Motherhood is a construct of the patriarchy, you said, and I knew that you knew you were right.’

‘Did you ask?’ Leonie might be crying. She’s looking away.

‘Ask what?’

‘If I was OK?’