‘I can’t really believe it, either,’ Vee says. There’s always a slight shock when she meets anyone famous, and another when she realises that she is there to photograph them, and for the length of time that takes, the two of them will be something like equal. (Some people do as she asks; others ignore her. The best subjects are the ones between, who have their own sense of what they should be, but can respect a different opinion.) Every job – even the tricky ones, too little time or not enough light, an assistant or a journalist hurrying things along or interrupting – seems too good to be true. Part of Veronica thinks her luck will run out, one day, and each job will be her last. Her diary is filling up with commitments for the next three months, though. All she has to do it keep at it. Keep doing a good job. Just like her father always says: do your best and keep doing it.

‘She’s a saint, for sure,’ he says, now, looking at the photograph, again. Vee caught her mid-yawn, hand midway to her mouth, eyes looking downwards, brow furrowed, as though she is puzzled by this most human reaction, as though she has never known tiredness before. Vee had asked her if she needed to rest. She’d shaken her head, smiling, as if to say, what does it matter what I feel. The images Veronica caught then, three in quick succession, were her favourites, and the picture editor had liked them too, printing them in a column down the side of the text of the interview. The yawn is on the facing page, between headline and byline. Vee’s name, in tiny capitals, runs up the side of the photograph.

‘Not everyone thinks a lot of her.’ Leonie had been scathing: people like Mother Teresa are only called saints by the world because they tidy up the mess the world – by which she means men – makes.

‘I’m very proud of you, you know,’ Stanley adds, ‘people said all sorts when you moved away, that you’d be back when you got sick of London, that you thought you were too good for us, but I knew you would do what you’d set your mind to. And I knew you wouldn’t forget your roots.’