Vee cannot remember taking these, and when she looked at them they didn’t seem right. She saw love, but she felt something more complicated. It could be that the ill-feeling was hers, though, and the photograph was true. In another image, the two of them were looking at each other, their faces almost mirror-images. The bridge of Erica’s nose was slightly less pronounced than that of Leonie’s; Leonie’s chin was jowlish and lost to comparison. But the relationship was clear. You might, if you had been told it often enough, believe that you were looking at an aunt and her niece. But if you came to this photograph cold there would be no question that you were looking at a mother and daughter. And a mother and daughter who adored each other, at that.

But Vee has never really trusted the photographs she took on the day Leonie died. Nothing in her other memories of Leonie – nothing in her writing – suggested she could love a child, or would want to. And yet, here is something you could class as evidence that she did.

The second contact sheet is the photographs of Erica and Tom that Vee took at the Greenham Common Peace Garden. Developing them, along with the pictures from the rally, in the darkroom in her hollowed-out, blacked-out attic, she had known that it was likely to be the last time she went through this process of particular chemical magic.

Vee would have been proud of these portraits of Erica, if she was still a photographer. The light, the way the rain in the air diffused it, the paleness and softness of the trees and sky mean that Erica’s face is strong and clear against a fading world. In Vee’s favourite – she has circled it, like she did in the old days, she couldn’t help herself – Erica is looking straight into the camera, eyes dark, hair made lighter than it is in reality by the spring light, mouth ready to ask a question. It is perfectly Erica, and at the same time, perfectly Leonie, despite the changes Erica has chosen to make to her face. In another, she is looking at Tom. It matches the way Erica and Leonie are looking at each other, on the other contact sheet. Displayed side by side, a connection is asking to be made.

The pain is not worsening, but it’s changing, a series of tremors flecking at the edges of her consciousness. The noise from the adjacent gallery seems to be fading, as though Vee has become untethered, and is drifting away. Erica is still close, though, sliding the contact sheets over each other: there’s a smoothness to the sound of it, and then the pierce of air while Erica inhales. ‘Veronica?’

Vee keeps her eyes closed; waits. The world is shrinking. It’s too late to wonder whether she has done the right thing. The thing is done.