When Marieke had showed up to make the funeral arrangements and organise the adoption paperwork so I could leave Holland and return to live with her in Australia, I’d asked if she thought it was odd I was yet to cry over my parents’ deaths. What if I was one of those strange criminals you read about in the news – a person devoid of empathy who tortures others without remorse? But Marieke had assured me grief has its own timeline.

‘Your parents died in a freak accident, Josefeine, something nobody could have predicted. It will take time for the shock to wear off. But one day, you will cry, and when that moment comes I’ll be there to console you.’

I’d never quite worked up the courage to tell her she was wrong.

I let the ocean cradle me and, after half an hour’s gentle rocking elapsed, raised my head and glanced back towards the shore. The southern end of the beach was already packed, although it was not yet nine. Teenagers splashed playfully in the shallows and a pod of surfers wove in and out of sight, their boards spearing the waves as neatly as needles through cloth. Bondi had been packed with tourists and locals for as long as I could remember. I could still recite the number of the bus that had conveyed me to the city interchange during the summer holidays, I could picture it wheezing to a stop outside Marieke’s Marrickville terrace where she’d brought me to live. There was a particularly cranky bus driver on the 412 route who always shouted at me to hurry, then sighed as if greatly put upon when I fumbled the unfamiliar coins. I once heard him mimic my Dutch accent to another passenger, exaggerating the vowels like a toddler learning their first rhyme. I accepted his mocking without complaint but promised myself I would work hard to be rid of the accent, casting off the fragments of my old life like an ill-fitting shell.