Erica nods. Those eyes, round like a child’s as she listens. Then, unexpectedly, she smiles. She’s not looking at Vee. She’s not really now: she’s then. ‘I remember she was always talking, and always looking. I remember her and my mother talking about me, a lot, because I felt . . .’ Erica puts her hand on her stomach, her face twisting, as though something is curdling inside her.

‘I think the morning you came, Leonie had said my mother was a bad mother. And my father was complaining about how Leonie never shut up and my mother never stopped complaining about her. And then they had to stop arguing and we had to tidy the house up, because you were coming.’ She scratches at her temples again, a gesture that little Tom will no doubt remember one day, look back on as being part of what made his mother what she was.

Tears clump Vee’s throat. Pain travels down her spine, up again, reaches her crown.

Erica shakes her head. ‘That’s all.’

‘Look at her, though,’ Vee says, even though remembering Leonie, really thinking about her, hurts, ‘you can see everything that she was. Clever, thoughtful, and just – just a force. And I think that if I saw that, probably even if I knew she was dead, I wouldn’t have been able to help but photograph it. I don’t know if it was shock or instinct. But it’s what photographers do. Female photographers get . . .’ what’s the word? ‘Monstered for it. Male ones get applauded for being unflinching.’ She adds, because she can, now, ‘If my camera was on the ground, I know I tried to help.’

Vee pauses. She looks at Erica, who might be crying, but the sparks and flares of light at the edges of her vision have begun, so it’s hard to tell. She’s not saying anything, though, so Vee continues, ‘And if you had come in, of course I would have shouted at you to go. I wouldn’t have wanted you to see. One of my aunts made me go to see my mother in her coffin and I never forgave her for it. If you were going to be a child without a mother, you didn’t need to see it. So yes, I might have shouted at you. But it would have been to save you from something I didn’t think you should see.’

God, this pain. All of it, inside and out. Drugs, then sleep, and if tomorrow never comes, well—