‘We’ll start with your 1968 Dagenham photograph, and then we’ll move through to the 1970 Miss World, then into the portraits, then Greenham,’ Erica says. ‘We’ll have a different configuration of walls than this current show’s, obviously, to demarcate the sections. And I’d like to have a single photograph to lead into each section, with text to contextualise, which I’m working on at the moment.’

Vee has never had a wall moved for her convenience. She’s always worked with what she can see.

‘I’ll be giving a whole section to the Greenham archive. I’m going to put the artefacts from your darkroom there, too.’

‘The darkroom . . .’ no, Vee cannot bring herself to say ‘artefacts’ ‘. . . kit is from when Leonie and I shared a flat. So it’s a good five years before the Greenham peace camp started. Most of those photographs would have been developed at labs. I didn’t have time to do much of my own developing by then.’

Erica nod-shrugs, stepping aside to let a group of chattering tourists pass. ‘We’ll date and label them correctly. And we’ll end with the photograph of Leonie.’

‘Must we? I mean . . .’ Vee knew this was coming, she’s not a fool, ‘I understand it needs to be there, somewhere. But at the end?’

‘Well,’ Erica says, and she presses her lips together, as Leonie used to when she was thinking, ‘if we’re being chronological, it’s the obvious thing to do.’ She turns away, walking to the other end of the gallery. Vee might own the photographs – it might be an honour for Erica to work with her – but there’s no question of who is in charge in this space. Well, Vee’s the one in charge of herself. She lets Erica walk away, and pretends to study the images on the wall, though she is thinking of her own work.

That final image of Leonie is another reason why this exhibition was a bad idea. Vee knew, even as she was typing the email to say she would go ahead, that she should just say no. And yet, she did it. She knows she has holes in her memory, and not just the usual spaces a woman of her age might expect. A surgeon carved years out of her brain when he took the tumour tissue back in 2007. She thinks sometimes that she has holes in her reasoning, too. No gaps in her feelings, though – oh, no. The lack of Leonie is raw, cut-flesh raw, whenever she comes up against it.