The final straw had been – well, straw-like. They argued about Late Night Line Up when Barry said Joan Bakewell, the presenter who had been called ‘the thinking man’s crumpet’, was too clever by half and no one would ever marry her. Vee retorted no one would marry him if that was the way he thought, and anyway ‘crumpet’ was derogatory.

He’d sighed, in a long-suffering way that he’d been doing lately, and got right on Vee’s nerves. There was no way she could put up with that for another fifty, sixty years. ‘It’s all changed since you met that friend of yours. Leanne. You never used to use words like “derogatory”. You used to be a laugh.’

‘Leonie. You know her name, don’t pretend you don’t.’

‘Well yeah, I should, because I hear it often enough. She’s turning you into a lesbian.’ Every time she’d planned a trip with Leonie, Barry had opposed it, and when she told Leonie, all she’d done was raise an eyebrow, or say, ‘do you think that’s good enough for you?’, or, ‘do you think that’s the way women deserve to be treated?’. That was all. And that had been enough to help Vee to – well, to wake up to what Barry was like.

‘Barry’s not a bad person, though,’ she’d said to Leonie, once.

‘He doesn’t have to be,’ Leonie had replied, ‘he’s grown up in a system that makes him think he’s more important than you. Or any woman.’

The night her engagement ended, Vee decided against ignoring his dig at her friend, ‘Don’t be ignorant, Barry.’

‘I’m no more ignorant than I’ve ever been. You’re the one who’s more la-di-da. If you’re too good for me, you should just say so.’

There was never going to be a better time. Vee took a breath, found her balance, the way she does before she takes a photograph, ‘I ain’t a lesbian. And I ain’t too good for you,’ she’d been trying to talk more neutrally, more like Leonie, but when she was under stress her Essex came out. Breathe. Keep trying, ‘I’m not right for you, though, Barry. Surely you can see that.’

But apparently he couldn’t. He’d sat in silence, refusing to leave, until she went to bed. When she got up in the morning, he’d gone; she’d told her dad, and he’d been disappointed – ‘Barry’s a good lad’ – but told her it was up to her who she married. She didn’t feel up to explaining that she might decide not to get married at all.