And yes, it’s artifice, and yes, it’s conditioning, and yes, it’s wrong. But how Vee would love to take to those faces with her camera, sculpt the angles with light and shade, turn conventional beauty into something powerful and stripped back and stunning. Whichever beauty queen is now centre stage is simpering and smiling and talking about how much she loves the colour of her gown. She’s wearing high, strappy shoes which catch the light, and her hair is solidly in place in a pleat that looks as though it would survive the worst that the IRA could do. Vee imagines this woman barefoot, wearing a towelling bathrobe two sizes too big so that the only flesh on show is her face and neck, a triangle of throat, her hands and feet. Her hair would be wet – not damp, wet, hanging in rat tails around her face, the tops of her ears sticking out. The shape of her body – whatever stupid measurements they are spouting on the stage now, as though they are her worth – would be hidden by the thickness of the fabric. And she would not be smiling. Or pouting. Or come-hithering. She would be staring into the lens, fierce, with a look that said: I have no time for your men-rule-the-world bullshit. This is what I look like. This is me.

There’s a line-up of all the women on the stage, and then they file off, to applause and cooing from the audience. Some of the women around them are applauding, presumably to avoid suspicion, although it’s hard – for Vee, at least – not to be pulled into genuine admiration. She remembers how her mother used to love to dress up, her one pair of high-heeled shoes always wrapped in their tissue and put back in their box after they were worn. Vee leans over to Leonie and says, ‘I’d love to take their photographs. Without makeup. Just women.’

Leonie says, ‘Not “just”. And why not do it with other women? The ones that aren’t meeting a patriarchal notion of beauty? It’s a total waste.’

‘Of beauty?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. That’s not beauty. That’s patriarchy in action. Brains. It’s a waste of brains. And time. How long does it take them to do whatever they do to their eyebrows? Or starve? Worry about every damn thing they put in their mouths?’ Vee thinks of the photographs she has already seen in the press, of a woman in a swimsuit smiling as a man with a tape measure wraps it around her hips, takes a reading. Leonie is right. Well, she’s always right. But Vee is the one who can see a different way to portray beauty. Or perhaps, a different kind of beauty to portray.