‘What is that?’ There’s a strange smell, half-sweet half-dead, that makes her pull back her head in a hurry.

‘Probably the rotten tomatoes. The lettuce doesn’t really smell, but it’s slimy. I’ve had it in a plastic bag on the windowsill for two weeks.’

Vee approaches the bag again, more cautiously, and puts in a hand, picking up a small paper bag. ‘And what are these?’

‘Have you never seen a flour bomb?’ Leonie laughs again, ‘You should see the look on your face. I bet you’ve never even had detention, have you?’

Vee shakes her head. ‘I was a proper goody-two-shoes,’ she says, ‘until I met you. You’ve led me astray.’

‘That’s what I like to hear,’ Leonie says, ‘that is cool.’ She kisses Vee, corner of the mouth: she often does it, and Vee has learned that it means nothing to Leonie, though it cannot help but feel sexual to her. Leonie is the only person who kisses her, now, and she’s ashamed by how much she treasures something Leonie does without thought.

Leonie feels around in the side pocket of the handbag, then slaps two tickets down on the table: Miss World Pageant 1970. ‘We’re near the front. The signal is a football rattle.’

For a moment Vee wants to get up, go home, put on some lipstick, knock on Barry’s door. She reminds herself that this is important work. They need to get noticed. They need to make people see what’s wrong with the world.

‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to get any decent shots inside, especially if there’s flour,’ she says, ‘but if not, we can look around outside, afterwards.’

Leonie nods. ‘Bound to be a postman somewhere,’ she says, with a smile, and Vee feels the pleasure of this friendship like a stab. ‘There’s the protest outside the Albert Hall, and then outside the Café de Paris afterwards.’ She says it ‘Par-ee’, so it takes Vee a moment to work out where she means. Leonie is on the WLF committee, and always knows everything that’s planned. ‘And are you going to crash at mine?’

‘If that’s still . . . cool,’ Vee says, the word unwieldy on her tongue. Her father tells her off for using what he calls ‘hippie talk’, but she wants to fit in. It’s another way to move through the world without being noticed. And not being noticed is how you take a decent photograph. And taking decent photographs is what gets you noticed. Life is like taking photographs: to do it well, you have to understand it. Film, exposure and darkroom are easier to manage, and have more predictable results.