I watch as a straw-haired woman and a stick-thin boy head towards the toilets. The woman, his mother I suppose, seems annoyed. The boy is hurrying as if to get away from her. I can see from her face that there’s more she wants to say to him before he flees. She reaches forward and gives the boy a smack, making a sound like a pop gun. He jumps, shoots me a look of surprise mixed with fear and embarrassment, and runs away on his toes.

‘I told you not to,’ she barks at him, as he escapes her reach. ‘I warned you.’

She makes eye contact with me. Shock must show on my face.

‘Like you’d never,’ she mutters.

But I have. I know her expression because I’ve made it, and I understand her anger because I’ve felt it. And yet . . . What if I end up with people like her as my clients? Years of study, followed by a fancy wardrobe and a city office, only to defend the woman who hit a kid at the pool? I’ve invested in work before, and it hasn’t gone the way I wanted. The times I counted to one hundred when I brushed my hair, the assignments on American pre-war poetry reworked late into the night, forever in terror I might get a B, the nappies folded perfectly, for what? I was vice-captain at high school, head of the swim team. On my last day, Principal Thomas presented me with a hardback dictionary and said that whether I decided to pursue teaching or nursing, he was certain a good vocabulary would come in useful.

‘Oh Mum, don’t be a goose. I’ll pay.’ I look towards the entrance as Lou’s cousin Eliza removes a folded one-dollar note from a coin purse and gives it to the pool attendant. Eliza and her mother are similarly dressed in sorbet-coloured cotton frocks and white sandals, both women pale and scrubbed. Eliza wears coral lipstick and a hat that would suit a fifty-year-old librarian. She strikes me as someone who’s spent her entire life preparing to be middle-aged.

Eliza’s mother rests one hand on the enormous pram by her side, its kittens-and-balls-patterned fabric unbleached by the sun.

There’s no one lined up behind them so the man takes his time unhooking the waist-high door that separates him from the public and walking the few steps needed to open the gate next to the turnstile. Eliza’s mother wheels the pram through and Eliza follows in her wake, leaning to one side then the other as she peers past her mother to ensure there’s room. Eliza dips her head in the direction of the attendant, as though his act of chivalry warrants notice, but not much since it is the least a woman with a baby – one who paid for her mother’s entry – deserves.

Eliza stares at me for a moment before recognition shows on her face. Which is fair enough: we’ve met once. She smiles, says something to her mother, then takes the pram.