Mum glimpsed a black dorsal fin near the rockpools. She texted in the family chat. I was looking for them constantly, the shadowy parts of the white-capped waves, black swans ducking underwater at the rivermouth, logs floating after a storm. But you won’t see them if you’re always looking for them. Mum said she thought it looked unusually high. Was it true or were we just looking for evidence?

You’re scared of it for so long but then it’s just a moment and it’s over, my friend said, rain falling in waves outside her window. My uncertainty filled the room but it wasn’t heavy, it was soft, she held its weight gently. She’d wanted a pool but when the time came they were all taken, they were short of midwives and she hadn’t slept in days by the time they told her to push. But don’t focus on the bad stories, my friend said. I refocused on the room, the pearly sky, the macrocarpa trees, the harbour beyond where last week a pair of humpback whales were seen. An expert on the radio said 100 years ago they were seen in the harbour all the time, entire pods of them, until whaling wiped them out. They were only just starting to recover from that, just now beginning to return.