In the morning she is eager to begin. We go in pyjamas and rubber slippers to check on the dogs. Hunter has hunkered in the neem bush close to the beach gate, Thompson has claimed the land behind the garage, and Flopsy is furthest away, in the casuarina groves behind the house. Between them we have thirteen new puppies. They are minuscule: eyes shut, blindly sucking at their mothers’ teats. They lie in a heap, one on top of the other, noses and paws, making tentative squeaky sounds. They move constantly, searching for warmth, these black-and-white finger-long creatures of fur and heart. It is an effort not to pick them up and squeeze their tiny bodies.

As they grow stronger, they will begin to explore and find their way to the house, towards the new source of food. When we return from our evening beach walks with the big dogs they’ll spring out at us from the bushes along the path – a harlequin splodge attacking our toes. ‘What will we do, Lucy?’ I say. ‘There’s too many of them.’

But it is marvellous – all this life.

Lucia and I drive to the AVM nursery to buy a row of flame trees to block our neighbour’s ugly orange house. The toothless gardener who works there reminds me to put red soil and earthworm fertiliser in the garden beds regularly. He keeps a stack of sweets by the cash register and gives Lucia a packet of Cadbury’s Gems, which she demands I open immediately. On the drive home she pops the Gems into her mouth one by one, according to colour.

It is a still day. Nothing moves. Even the sea is lifeless – a sheet of metal suspended out of the sky’s head like an exhausted grey tongue. It’s the kind of day that allows for openings – makes me wonder how it happened that in another life I lived in America. I had a husband, a job, people I socialised with. Not friends exactly. There had been only one friend after a decade of living in America, and she moved away before I did. But there was the structure of a certain kind of life, one I’d imagined for myself before occupying it. And I had learned how to navigate that life even though I frequently felt removed from it.

That was me, wasn’t it? Being neighbourly and taking Rosemary Callahan’s kid to the school bus every morning because she and her husband left early for work. That was me feeling queasy about the sight of so many children piled in together, but smiling and patting the brat on his head anyhow, wishing him a good day because it was the dutiful thing to do. And still me – putting on something smart for work, driving half an hour to sit in my cubicle at the customer service department of Duke Energy, eating my grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, saying, How y’all doin? as if that’s the way words were meant to come out of my mouth.