Erica nods but Vee isn’t fool enough to think that means agreement. ‘There are so many questions around the photograph.’

‘More fool anyone who thinks I have answers.’

Vee cannot have the truth: she cannot understand, or reconstruct, what happened that day with certainty. So why could she, would she, give anyone else an easy answer?

‘All I want,’ Erica speaks gently, quietly, as though she can coax Vee into line, ‘is for you to tell me what you remember.’

‘No. It’s not up for discussion and it never will be.’

Vee walks slowly to the end of the gallery, her soles squeaking. After a few minutes she hears Erica tap-tap-tap to catch up. They look at each other, and Erica nods. It’s a truce.

‘You haven’t mentioned a section of photographs of me.’ There’s a bench in this room and Vee lowers herself on to it, resentful and grateful at once. She used to spend hours on one knee or both, crouched or on tiptoe, all to make sure she got the best shot that she could. It’s as though she used up her knees faster than the rest of her; faster than a normal person would.

Erica laughs, the relieved sound of someone back on safe ground. ‘I wanted to talk to you about that. There aren’t a lot of photos of you in the public domain. There’s your official self-portrait, and by the look on your face you took that under duress. A couple of press ones, from when you won the Political Photograph of the Year in ’84.’

Vee nods. ‘I’ve got the trophy, somewhere. If that would do as an – as ephemera . . .’ oh no, that’s not right, it’s not paper, ‘an object.’ She can’t remember the night itself, but she has the evidence of it. Something about the thought of it scratches at her.

‘That would be good,’ Erica says, looking round the space. ‘Do you have any other photographs of you?’

‘I might have,’ Vee says. Heaven knows what’s in the loft. She was always meticulous about labelling and storing negatives, though. She must have something, somewhere, to change the way the end of the exhibition looks. She had hoped it might redeem her, but it looks as though its climax is going to be her greatest failure. ‘And maybe more of Leonie.’ Leonie alive. Leonie blazing and bright, ‘We knew each other for a long time.’

‘Her writing was . . . it was amazing. She was way ahead of her time.’

Sadness knots at the back of Vee’s throat, pulling the pain from her temples downwards. ‘That’s what she used to say. She was very . . . she was unimpressed by the way she was treated.’