‘Nothing.’ She could say, ‘Even though most of what you write is rejected’, but that wouldn’t be fair. Especially as Vee’s success is due, in a great part, to either taking up the early introductions Leonie made, or adopting her approach, by simply asking for the jobs she wants.

Not long after Vee moved in to the Chelsea flat, Leonie sat her down with a pile of newspapers and said, ‘Read. Make a list of female journos and a list of people you’d like to photograph. Write to the journos. Ring up the newsdesks. Tell them if they’re going to do a piece on people you’re interested in, you’d like to photograph them.’

‘Will that work?’

Leonie had shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s worth a try, though, isn’t it? I think Germaine Greer’s got something else coming out. Start by saying you could photograph her.’

‘Yes,’ Vee said, ‘I could do that, couldn’t I?’ As her dad says: you don’t ask, you don’t get.

‘You could,’ Leonie says, and then adds, ‘Why don’t you send’ – she pauses for a minute while she thinks – ‘I don’t know what you call them. When you make a sheet with all the images on the film, in rows? With the edges of the negatives showing?’

‘Contact sheets?’

‘Contact sheets.’ Leonie grins. She’s always been fascinated by them, ever since Vee sent her that first one, the week after they met at Dagenham. ‘That’s got to be more interesting.’

And Vee had done just that. It had been cheap, too – she had contact sheets already, and it showed her technique and range better than a single photograph did. After all, anyone can get lucky with one good shot. A contact sheet shows the way your photographer’s eye works, what your camera noses out about your subject. Within three weeks she had her first commission, thanks to Eve Pollard, a journalist Leonie knew at the Daily Mirror, putting a word in for her. By the time April 1971 came she was doing a shoot a week. It wasn’t a lot but it was more than nothing. She spent a long summer schlepping out to Essex at the weekends to photograph weddings, but it meant she could see her dad regularly. By September, she had decided to take no more bookings for portraits, weddings, or family photographs: she was a press photographer. Her savings paid her bills; her earnings paid for living, and travelling, and – after a year when the commissions were coming faster – a new camera, lenses, and a proper bag to go with them. She had started to feel like a real photographer at last.