Erica shifts from foot to foot, and presses her lips together as if to hide the coral stain on her mouth. ‘You would never pick that fight now, though? Haven’t we understood that as feminists, as women, we respect each other’s choices?’

This would be the time to mention Erica’s nose job, and the way she has lost something distinctive and strong for the sake of what the male gaze considers acceptable. But she hasn’t the energy. Instead she says, ‘If we’re feminists by making choices, instead of being limited by the patriarchy at every turn, then that’s a thin kind of feminism. It’s not what we were really about. We wanted a better world for women. Not one where we respected each other’s right to be oppressed.’

Erica seems to flinch, but Vee can’t be sure. ‘From what I’ve read, women were hard on each other in the seventies, too. At least there’s a bit more live and let live now.’

Vee sits in silence for a moment, leafing through the magazines that Erica has laid on the table, recognising her photographs on covers. ‘Leonie teased me for wearing dresses when I went to see my dad.’

Erica laughs, ‘Really? I don’t think of her as teasing anyone. Listening to my mother talk, you’d think Leonie did nothing but . . .’ she casts around for the right expression, a precision that Vee likes in her, ‘verbal assassinations and scorn.’

Vee tips her head, smiles, to show that Ursula had a point. The movement makes something in her head prick and sting. ‘In the early days, we weren’t worse to each other than men were to us, but we weren’t always better. And that was hard, because we expected better from each other. And I don’t think we grasped that – that if someone had spent years thinking about their appearance, if they believed their value was in their beauty, then they didn’t see Miss World as exploitation. They saw it as achievement. We weren’t trying to undermine that, but of course women who had invested that way felt undermined.’

Erica nods too. ‘I really want the exhibition to make people think about the way women are seen today. Miss World looks tame in comparison.’

Vee thinks back to what she remembers of that time. ‘I think we hoped that the way women looked could become irrelevant.’

Erica nods. ‘Do you think you were naive?’