I was grateful that Caitlin wasn’t asking me questions about Mum or how I was feeling for once, and I could take the time to focus on letting all the stresses of the last two weeks melt away. Occasionally I looked over at Caitlin, who was taking it all in.

She finally broke the silence: ‘Have you ever scuba-dived?’ I stood up and tilted my head to let some water drain from my ear.

‘Nah, I haven’t.’

‘Apparently it’s really good around here. Do you want to go for a walk? That hill is calling me.’ She pointed to a hill that rose sharply from the beach with a huge red rock cliff facing the ocean.

We both emerged from the water and stepped onto the beach. Caitlin said, ‘Our things should be fine,’ seeing a couple of other families come down from the car park. I was hesitant about leaving my phone behind, but I figured she knew what she was talking about.

As we made our way towards the hill, there were some rocks dividing the beach that we had to clamber over. Sometimes we walked out into the water to get around the rocks, rather than risk getting our feet burned on the hot sand.

We finally came to the base of the massive hill. It had a whole lot of boulders around the base, which formed a small point, and the ocean was calmly lapping and gurgling up against them. I really wanted to see what was around the other side of the point and it was obvious that Caitlin did too because she was investigating a route.

She realised that we couldn’t get over the rocks, which were too sharp and hot. ‘Want to swim around?’

‘It’s really deep, and a bit scary …’

‘Some of the things that are most worthwhile involve risk,’ she told me before she started wading out into the water. ‘Come on,’ she tempted.

I shrugged and followed Caitlin, and soon we were both doing breaststroke around the point. Within a minute we were in an awesome little bay with a huge rock hanging over the beach like a cave.

‘That’s so pretty!’ I said.

‘You just never know what’s around the corner, hey?’

We dragged ourselves out of the water and lay on the warm sand, taking it all in. Not a word of a lie, a pod of dolphins popped up in front of us.

‘Oh my god!’ Caitlin said, and I had to admit, it was the coolest thing I’d seen in a long time. The sun was still far from setting, and moving down and casting a nice light behind some clouds, with the rays seeping out across the ocean’s surface.

The dolphins swum out of sight after a few minutes. Caitlin and I must have laid there for at least half an hour without a word spoken before she finally said, ‘I guess we better make our way back.’

She jumped up and started wading out into the water and I had no choice other than to follow her again. There was no way I was going out into the deep water by myself. Even though Dad keeps reminding me that I’ve got more chance of dying from falling out of bed than getting eaten by a shark, I’ve never seen a news report about someone dying from falling out of bed.