Taking out my phone, I start filming a pair that are swimming together in a neat loop, mesmerised by the way they turn over and over, letting the water skim gently over their glossy brown bellies. I have seen seals in a zoo before, but never out in the wild like this, enjoying the freedom that all this space allows. Aside from the occasional trampling feet of a tourist or two, they must have a pretty relaxed existence, and it is a satisfying notion. It’s nice to know that my grief has receded enough to allow me to feel happy on behalf of others again, because for a while, I seemed to lose that ability altogether. Anything and anyone who was not me, I resented. I wanted to portion away my pain, while at the same time I did whatever I could to load more of it on to myself. I clung to it, using it as an anchor to halt the progression of my life.

I lift my chin and close my eyes for a moment while I bask, seal-like, in the heat of the sun. How astonishing that I should be here, on the edge of one of the furthest tips of the world, where the days begin and end before so many others. How can it be fair that I get to feel the rough surface of the concrete beneath my feet, smell the salt in the air, and have the ripple of the wind lift the hair from my cheeks? Why me, when it could just as easily have been her?

‘Pretty bloody nice here, right?’ says Kit at my side. Tui is sitting down on the edge of the pier a few feet away, carefully taking photos of a sunbathing seal with Kit’s phone.

‘Bloody beautiful,’ I agree, grinning at my own terrible attempt at a Kiwi accent, before turning my eyes back to gaze across the water.

‘I spent a few weeks here after my dad—’ he begins, stopping when I glance at him. ‘I needed to get away from all the reminders at home, and this felt like as good a place as any.’

‘There’s something very wild about it,’ I say, thinking how different the craggy rocks and crashing waves are to the placidity of Lake Wakatipu.

‘At the time, it matched my mood right about perfectly,’ he explains. ‘I was even angrier than one of these fellas.’

‘At least you still had your agility,’ I joke, as a particularly rotund seal tries and fails to lumber out of the water.

‘What did you do after?’ he asks, and a beat of silence stretches between us.

‘Nothing. Nothing at all for the longest time,’ I admit, not looking at him. ‘Then I came here.’