The man who tutted at Leonie’s swearing earlier barks a sharp, ‘I say! That’s enough!’ Vee, turning to glance at his purpling, indignant face, feels something else within her fall into place, lock, make her stronger. She’s not just here to protest about the way women are portrayed. It’s about the whole damn world. The beauty queens only parade because the men in bow-ties want to look at them. The women who are with the men in bow-ties have been made to think that this is OK. No one here believes they are doing anything wrong. Everyone is brainwashed. And among the confusion and the shouting, under the disapproving gaze of the people who came here to watch the show, and the blank eyes of the television cameras, Veronica Moon gets it. Really, properly. Not in words, but in feelings. She might not know everything, but she understands. She unclips her camera lens cap, puts the viewfinder to her eye.

Shoved and shunted from the building with the other shouting protestors a few minutes later, Vee finds herself next to a grinning Leonie, and because she cannot express, exactly, what it is that she has felt, she blurts, ‘I love you.’ Leonie seems not to hear.

*

Leonie drinks a lot, fast, as they stand in the street outside the Café de Paris two hours later. Hip-flasks filled with brandy and whisky are being passed from hand to hand. Vee sips – she likes the warmth the alcohol brings, but she wants to keep her wits about her, just in case she does get arrested. The police seem benign, good-humoured almost, chatting to some of the quieter protesters who are asking them about their wives, their sisters, talking about how beauty contests undermine the women in their lives. The police don’t appear to be taking them seriously, but you never know. Some of it might sink in.

Vee feels overwhelmed, still, by her sudden understanding of how much work there is to do. Feeling around in her handbag for her hanky, her fingers find instead her lipstick, and she pulls it out and throws it in the gutter. She’ll never wear makeup again.

Every time the protesters start to feel cold, or tired, more women arrive with more placards – ‘Women Are People Too’, ‘Women Demand Liberation’ – and the chanting finds new strength with new voices. There’s euphoria everywhere at the disruption the action at the Royal Albert Hall has caused; speculation about how many millions of people might have seen the protest on television. Hundreds of thousands, maybe. Vee can’t begin to imagine it. She can imagine Barry’s mother’s face, though.