Finally, Barry got the message. And it seems like no one in Colchester has time for Vee, or a good word to say about her new friends and her new interests, which is a bit much, as they haven’t bothered to find anything out. She’s stopped seeing most of her old school friends because she’s sick of the snide comments about why she doesn’t wear makeup any more, and of how she’s ‘talking posh’. Vee has given up trying to explain that if she wants to work more widely she needs to be more neutral. She is sick of being scoffed at, or being told that Michael Caine isn’t too good for his accent. Yes, Vee says, but he wants to stand out. I want to blend in. ‘Blend in here, then,’ they say. She had tried photographing them, a few times, but it hasn’t really worked; they try to look posed, different to their everyday selves, and that’s the opposite of the images that Vee wants her camera to find. And now she doesn’t seem to be invited to the regular get-togethers. She doesn’t mind. Not really. But although she doesn’t miss her old life anymore, she’s lonely, sometimes, without it.

‘Hello, Veronica,’ says Barry. He doesn’t call her Vee any more.

‘Barry. How are you?’

‘As well as can be expected,’ he says, and then, his face trying to swallow a smile and failing, ‘I’m going out with someone tonight.’

Vee waits long enough to check that she doesn’t mind. She doesn’t. That’s a relief. ‘Oh. That’s good.’

‘It’s Cathy,’ Barry adds, ‘my sister’s friend?’

Cathy. Cathy. It takes Vee a moment to place her. ‘Works at the doctor’s?’

‘That’s right,’ Barry says.

‘I hope you have a good time. She’s always been lovely with Dad when he’s been in.’ You should help a sister out when you can, is what Leonie always says. She probably doesn’t mean helping a sister to get herself married to Barry, but if that’s what Cathy wants, more power to her, as far as Vee’s concerned.

Barry nods. If he’d been looking for jealousy or disappointment in Vee, he hides it. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘London. To see Miss World.’

‘I though you didn’t approve of that sort of thing.’ Last year, she had refused to watch it, even though Barry’s mum had put on a buffet and invited everyone round to see it on their new colour TV.

‘I don’t,’ Vee says, and she gets in to the car and drives away.

20 November 1970

20 November 1970

London