She was invited to sponsor this or photograph that or come and join in here. She sponsored, but she didn’t show up to anything. Illness (non-specific) was her excuse, for a while, but she got better. She travelled again but she didn’t take her camera with her. Everywhere were people with digital cameras; it was The Future, newly arrived, and Vee ached for the days of light meter and darkroom, judgement and skill. She didn’t ache for friends, apart from the one she would never get back. It could have been that the part of her brain that cared about others, wanted to connect, was part of what she lost in the operating theatre with that first tumour. It could have been that it was never that big to begin with. All she was left with was tenderness where she knew the memories of her father’s death and Leonie’s were.

26 April 2018

26 April 2018

Erica

Oh, Erica is proud. She was proud already, and then Vee came, and praised her, and she didn’t know how to add it to her bursting heart. As she looks along the space of the gallery, so well prepared and so true to her vision, and sees how many people are crowding round the images, she takes a breath and tells herself she has done a great job. This busy, buzzy space will, over the coming months, show thousands of people what a force Veronica Moon was, how far feminism has come and how much is still to do.

The tapping of the champagne flute, the expectant semi-silence that follows, brings Erica back to tonight. How can it be time for her speech, already? She’s nauseous with a sickness that is different to the one she fought this morning, not wanting Marcus to see it, throwing up quietly in the en-suite when he was downstairs unloading the dishwasher. They’ve had the first conversation about the pregnancy. Both of them were cautious. Neither of them is sure.

It wasn’t until Tuesday, after Vee left, that Erica admitted to herself that this is more than a retrospective: it’s a memorial. Veronica Moon leaves only photographs. But who will commemorate the person? Who will mourn? Erica can’t let herself think this now (if it is her, and not just her hormones, which is more than possible). She has to focus.

Fortunately – something Erica has learned in academia, watching presentations and later giving one or two, at conferences, then lecturing – silence reads as confidence. She takes a sip of water and glances at her notes. They are words, not sentences, because she will look worse if she loses her place and stumbles.