The drive home takes longer than usual. I have never made a trip to the city without spending at least one night there, so I feel the fatigue of the traffic, the crowds, the ting-tong mall music. Lucia sleeps, head knocking against the glass of the window, tongue poking out of her mouth. Does she dream of her new pink dress? I feel angry, powerless; I can’t articulate it, but it has to do with the way people look at her. Families, children, grown people who can see there’s something different about her but who are so unused to the sight they can only gape. I wanted to smash in some of their ugly faces. I had hoped for what? Empathy? A jaunty day out with my sister. Instead, I am drained, barely able to drive back home.

As soon as we are slipping through the long driveway, I feel the blood return to my legs. The dogs are around, making all kinds of noises, tails frantic, paws in the car, scratching at the seats.

Mallika unloads the packages from the boot. ‘They were crying after you went,’ she says. ‘They thought you’ve gone, left them.’

I ask Mallika to make some instant noodles for dinner. Lucia is tired, but she looks pleased to see the dogs.

‘Whose birthday is it going to be soon?’ I say in a sing-song way. ‘Whose happy birthday?’

She looks at me, smiles sideways and nods her head. ‘Lucy’s happy birthday.’

The next morning we see dolphins. Hundreds of dolphins swimming north, their silver-pink bodies undulating in and out of the waves. Lucia and I run into the ocean, and when the sand bar drops and she can no longer touch her feet to the ground, she clambers on top of my back, clasping her hands around my neck tightly, saying, ‘Swim, Grace, swim fast.’

I swim far into the blue, further than I’ve ever been, but there’s no sign of the dolphins. ‘Maybe they looked closer than they really were? Maybe we were too late?’

We float there for a few minutes, turning around to look at the shore. The house looks like a pink speck in the distance, and the dogs, who followed us into the heat, are lined up like smudges of black along the beach.

And then the dolphins are upon us, around us, charging ahead. I can feel the weight of each body, the pulsating quick of this fish-mammal, larger than I expected – wild and cracking with power. Suddenly I am scared for the both of us, for being caught in the middle of this squad of nose and fin, but Lucia is shrieking, her fingers tight around my neck, ‘Look, look!’

When we swim back to shore, the dogs storm out from under the shade of the casuarina groves. Raja and Bagheera bark and lick the salt off our toes as if to make sure we are who we were before we swam out in the sea.