So she had said yes, with caveats. She wouldn’t talk to the press, she wouldn’t speak at the opening night. She would not give quotes, or be quoted, because that’s something she has never done, and would not begin to do now. Words are not her medium. And she would not, under any circumstances, discuss her final photograph of Leonie Barratt. Once the caveats were explored and her worries assuaged, and the exhibition proposal agreed, submitted, and accepted, she’d left Erica to get on with it, until today.

Tap-tap-tap go Erica’s heels in front of her, making a knocking at Vee’s temples, a pressure waiting to turn into a headache.

Erica turns, in the end space, indicates the far wall. ‘Here’s the obvious place for the Leonie photograph. It’s such a . . .’ she hesitates, and Vee sees how she is choosing her words ‘. . . it’s such a high-quality image that we’ll be able to blow it up to a good size. I want people to be able to make up their own minds.’ Her eye contact, which has been so unequivocal, falters: Erica is looking at Vee’s hairline. Erica is not quite as impartial as she would like Vee to believe.

Vee’s own focus is rising, falling, as pain starts to swell behind her eyes. She still dreams of Leonie’s death sometimes, the sudden horrible blank of it: now I’m here, now I’m gone. In sleep is the only time she remembers it. Waking, there’s just a space of missing memory, like a photograph taken when the lens cap was still in place.