‘I didn’t take that photo,’ he said. ‘The professional photographer snapped it. I was too busy taking this.’ He handed me a loose snapshot. The film’s surface was tacky with age, but I could clearly make out the figures in the foreground. The professional photographer’s back was turned to Gerrit’s camera; he had captured my mother’s expression, but not what inspired it: me. Seated on a plastic chair opposite my mother, I held my own seal pup and my mouth was open, in either shock or delight. I was wearing the smock my mother had sewn for my fifth birthday. She’d let me pick out the fabric myself. I remembered running my hand along the cotton bolts, searching through the prints for something with rosehips and blackberries and toadstools, like the illustrations in my favourite fairy book. I’d worn that dress until it fell apart. How funny; I hadn’t thought of it for years. I could recall with almost perfect clarity the way it had made me feel when I put it on – safe and warm, like a hug. I’d given up dresses later, swapped them for denim shorts and oversized T-shirts, things that could mask my body’s confusing abundance of hair and sticky fluids. But if I could reverse time, if I could stand in a room full of all the things I’d lost or discarded over the years and be given a second chance, that dress would be the first thing I’d reach for.

The grief rose swiftly, before I could stifle it. I felt my wrist grow limp. The photograph fluttered from my hand onto the rug.

Gerrit bent and scooped it up.

Dusting it off, he propped it up next to my mother’s image, her silent laughter the only sound I longed to hear.

I hoped I wouldn’t forget the way to the divers’ headquarters after our journey through the twisted maze of service roads around Oudeschild, I needn’t have worried.

‘Bram always invites me to the club’s annual Christmas get-together.’ Gerrit eased the car to a stop outside the clubhouse. ‘It’s a pretty exclusive guest list but I did Bram a favour a few years ago. Saved his dog’s life. The poor creature had a tick the size of my thumb attached to its belly. Must have picked it up running around the dunes. Since then, I’ve been a kind of unofficial club member. Sometimes we trade; I have more clay pipes than I know what to do with.’ His gaze slid towards me. ‘When he said they’d found something and you were coming out to take a look, I knew it must be pretty special. He hasn’t told me any of the details. I don’t suppose you’d care to give me a clue?’

I shook my head. ‘You’ll just have to wait and see.’

He watched me climb out, then reversed the car and drove off.