‘Exactly,’ Erica says, ‘I don’t know what to think. I haven’t even told Marcus. Well, I haven’t told anyone. Except you.’

The lift stops, and they step out into the exhibition space. Leonie greets them, her head double life-size on a repeat of the exhibition poster. They stand and look at it for a moment. ‘Leonie had an abortion,’ Vee says, ‘and she was absolutely unapologetic about it.’

She feels Erica nod. ‘I know. But I don’t want Tom to be an only child, and I might not have a lot more chances.’

‘So why aren’t you happy?’

Erica shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. What if I don’t love Marcus?’ She looks at Vee, and Vee wishes she were not out of her depth, wishes she had something to say that is helpful or at least not unintentionally tactless. Like talking about abortions. Erica’s eyes, even tired, are as lovely and as clear as Leonie’s were.

‘I don’t know either, Erica.’ Erica seems to understand, though, that Vee would say more, give more, if she could. She puts out a hand and rests it on Vee’s arm. The touch almost hurts.

Erica straightens and says, ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I want to focus on this. So. Here we are, at the beginning.’

Vee sees her Dagenham picture blown up, the newspapers featuring it displayed below. Passes the beauty queens, still weeping, surrounded by photographs of early marches and protests. So many faces she might have known the names for, once. Portraits, of the great and the good, the forgotten who were taking their moment and the women as recognisable now as they were then. She pauses in front of Margaret Thatcher.

Erica pauses too. ‘I know it sounds weird,’ she says, ‘but I love your Thatcher photo.’

‘I wish I remembered taking it.’

‘Why that one? In particular, I mean?’

Vee smiles. ‘Because I think that might be Leonie’s scarf around her neck.’

Erica laughs, ‘Let’s say it’s true.’ They walk on, quietly. It’s strange to be in a gallery empty of other people.

And here, almost at the end, is Leonie Barratt.

Still gone. Still the most important person in her adult life. The print must be three feet by two, smaller than it is on the poster but all the more impactful for that: concentrated Leonie. It’s like seeing the Mona Lisa in all its thirty-inch-by-twenty-inch glory after all the tea towels and jigsaws. Next to it, the contact sheet. It doesn’t exactly clear Vee’s name, but at least it doesn’t confirm the worst things she was accused of: watching her friend die as though it was a blood-filled horrific spectacle that she stood by and recorded without a second thought. Only the war photographers do that. And are praised for it. Oh, to be a man with a camera.