‘That doesn’t help.’ Vee leans a shoulder against the door, presses the space between her eyes with the pad of her thumb. ‘There’s nothing you can do. Get out.’ She cannot bear to look at him, his unshaven face and smell of sweat and garlic, his hairy paunch and bony knees – he has, at least, pulled the dressing gown around him, maybe sensing her intent to do him damage.

He walks backwards from the room, looking aggrieved, just as Leonie emerges from her bedroom, sleep-faced and confused. Vee slams the darkroom door, locking it behind her this time. It’s a futile gesture but it feels good, and it means that no one can interrupt her with apologies or offers of help.

Of course, she should have locked the damn thing anyway. But Leonie rarely surfaces before eleven. Lesson learned.

18 April 1977

18 April 1977

‘ARE YOU STILL SULKING?’ Leonie asks as she lumbers into the kitchen, where Vee is washing up. She may be being unnecessarily clattering about it, banging crockery onto the draining board. Maybe she is half-hoping something will break, to give her something else to be annoyed about.

‘I’m not sulking. I’m angry. And we need clean plates.’ She thinks about turning to face her flatmate, but instead she starts to blot at the water that pools on the Formica of the worktop between the wall and the back of the sink, and adds, ‘I think I’m entitled to be annoyed that months of work was ruined. You went mad at me that one time I forgot my key.’

‘It was 2 a.m. You ruined my flow.’

‘And you got it back. I won’t get those photographs back.’

‘It’s not like you needed them. They weren’t for anything.’

Vee takes a deep breath, but it’s not really to calm herself down, it’s to fuel her fury. She had hung about in the darkroom until she was sure the idiot man had gone, then taken a bath, then gone out with her camera for the rest of the day. She missed her Nikon’s familiarity for a long time, but the OM-1 feels as though it’s really right for her, a good fit in her hands, and so light that carrying a spare over her shoulder is barely noticeable. She’d intended to start photographing women again, but her heart wasn’t in it. And the more she thought about what she’d lost the angrier, the sadder, she got. An essential part of living with Leonie has always been to let her selfishness flow over and round Vee, like water, like wind. But this, Vee can’t let go. ‘They were for me. They were my work. I don’t belittle your writing, even though—’

‘Even though . . . ?’