‘You can take a couple of hours off.’ Vee doesn’t feel like letting this go, tonight. Even after this almost-decade of being part of the movement, she’s still more comfortable with Leonie by her side. Plus, she’s wretched with jet-lag from last week and flying to India to photograph Mother Teresa, and being with someone else will make this evening better than a chore. ‘Come on, Leonie. It will be a laugh.’

‘Did a woman write it?’

Vee unpins the tickets from the corkboard on the wall and looks at the detail. ‘No. Mike Leigh?’

‘Well, a woman wrote this’ – Leonie waves the book – ‘so she wins. Anyway. I’m really not up to it.’

And Vee just can’t be bothered, anymore. Almost seven years of living with someone who bends the rules to suit themselves is, all of a sudden, too much. ‘You’re well enough to shag some idiot who can’t read a DO NOT OPEN sign on my darkroom door. Take some responsibility, Leonie. You’re not ill. You just can’t be bothered.’

‘I’m not well,’ Leonie says, in a voice on the edge of whining, ‘and you have no right to say what’s going on in my body—’

For once, Vee interrupts. ‘I think I have the right to call you on the bullshit you talk so you never have to do anything you don’t want to do. Do you think I want to do this tonight when I’ve been at a shoot since eleven and I’ve got another one that starts at eight in the morning? Do you think I never get sick of being “that bird photographer”, like I’m a freak show? Do you think I like ironing my clothes? Do you think I never get tired of the endlessness of this stupid fight?’

‘You’ve been a feminist for, what, less than ten years and you’re tired of it? Tired of being able to work a camera without your tits getting in the way? Well, sorry making a living off the back of the rest of us isn’t enough for you.’ Vee has seen this malice in Leonie before, directed at men who talk over the top of her, women who think feminism might be complicated, or different, to the way Leonie sees it. This is the first time it’s been hurled in her direction, and it stings.

Especially because, ‘I didn’t mean that fight, Leonie. I meant this fight. The one we’re having. Me selling out, you being keeper of the flame or whatever it is that you think only you can do.’

‘I’m what?’ Leonie’s gaze is focused, hard.

May as well say it. ‘The rest of us are – getting on. Finding ways to work in the world. You sit in here and you judge us and tell us where we’re going wrong. Especially the ones who are successful.’