‘He’s asleep.’ So asleep that Erica took him out of the car seat, out of his zip-up suit, and carried him up to his cot without him even flickering an eyelid. ‘Sarah let him drop off in the car on the way back. She was very apologetic. I told her it didn’t matter.’ They have always tried to have ‘adult evenings’ – having agreed, when they decided to have a baby, that they wouldn’t become one of those couples who do nothing but talk about, and think about, their child. They would still go to the cinema. They would strap the baby on and walk along the Thames for a lazy weekend lunch as they often did when it was just the two of them. Their sex life might enter a new phase, of course it might, but they would keep on pleasing each other.

In reality, ‘adult evenings’ usually mean falling asleep on the sofa in front of the TV.

Erica secretly likes it when Tom has a nap late in the afternoon, because Marcus will happily entertain him while she takes a glass of wine and a book and has a long bath, as though she has no needs but her own to consider.

‘Ah well,’ Marcus says, and he pulls her in, ‘us time.’ He still smells a little like the morning after, under the last traces of his aftershave and the commuter-train sweat. ‘How about we go to bed for an hour? Then I’ll order us a pizza.’

He takes off his jacket and drops it onto the chair where Vee was sitting, just a couple of hours ago. Erica looks at his back, the broadness of his ribs and the way his shoulders knuckle as they move under his shirt. She asks herself if she feels like sex. She doesn’t really know. But if they have pizza tonight they can eat what’s in the slow cooker tomorrow, and that makes it worth trying to work up some enthusiasm.

Part 3: Focus

Part 3: Focus

The photographer must know what she is trying to create. The act of photographing is the act of placing a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional space, in a way that will have meaning for the person observing the finished image. It’s a complex task. You won’t achieve it unless you have some sense of what it is you are aiming to portray.

Veronica Moon, Women in Photographs (unpublished)

‘Alison as Beverly in Abigail’s Party’

Veronica Moon

Exhibition Section: Portrait Power

Camera: OM-1

Film: 400 ASA

First published: This Month, 1977

[Technical note: Moon switched to using an Olympus OM-1 camera in 1976. It is smaller and lighter, but has many of the same technical specifications as her previous Nikon F1. Although newer models did come out in subsequent years, Moon never upgraded again.]