‘I hadn’t been educated in the way that a lot of the women in the movement had. The ones I was mixing with, anyway, through Leonie. I felt quite honoured that she had taken me under her wing and I didn’t want her to think I was so ignorant that I wasn’t worth the bother. So I looked words up and I started reading the news. There was a programme called What the Papers Say on TV, so I would watch that, and listen to discussions on the radio. And I asked your aunt a lot of questions, too. She always took me seriously. Some of her friends weren’t so nice to me. She saw herself as a writer but really I think her gift was for education.’

‘My mother was a teacher.’

‘Ursula? Oh yes, of course, I remember.’

‘What do you remember?’

Go carefully, Vee. ‘Ursula would come to the flat, sometimes, but I don’t think she was sure what to make of us. She was working in a school, I remember, and she was married, so she had quite a settled lifestyle.’

Erica has stood still at last. ‘What was it like? Living in the flat?’

‘It was . . .’ Where are the words? ‘It seemed very – free – to me. Leonie wrote and went to groups and did some teaching. And she helped women she heard about through the . . . through the—’

‘Grapevine?’ Erica supplies. She doesn’t seem to register that Vee couldn’t find the word. Maybe having a toddler does that to you.

‘Yes. No.’ Ah, here it is. ‘Network. It was organised. It had to be because not everyone had a phone. There was a list of people you called, for different things.’

‘What did people call you and Leonie for?’

‘Leonie, when they needed power. Straight talking. Clear thinking. Me to take photographs.’

‘Of what?’

Vee remembers these vividly. ‘Injuries. Beaten women. So there was a record.’

Erica pales. ‘Of course.’ She’s paying full attention now. The slow cooker could catch fire and she wouldn’t notice. ‘I didn’t know about this.’

‘There’s no record – I took them, developed them, but they were private. They belonged to the women, not to me.’

‘Could we include some?’

Vee thinks of the women she visited, sitting silently in spare corners of their friends’ houses, how she had to coax them into the light. ‘I gave them to the women.’

‘Not the police?’

‘Things were different. It was a brave woman who went to the police. If they did, there was a good chance the police would ring their husbands to come and get them.’

Erica shakes her head. ‘That’s awful,’ she says.

‘It still is. It’s different, that’s all.’