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After almost three years away, we went to Depot beach for a weekend. Fish and chips at Batemans’ Bay: cooked prawns and aioli, calamari, lemon wedges, chips, and grilled and battered fish. We arrived in the dark, down the potholded road that had deteriorated in the intervening period. We rented the smallest cottage, with a bunk bed in the same room as the Queen with no windows at all – a perfect room for sleeping deeply in. The girls brought the mattresses from the bunk bed into the living room to sleep there for a bit more space.

In the morning, I got up at around 5am and stumbled out into the living room when Rhea asked me if I had the serum. It took me a moment to realise that she was sleep talking.

She apparently woke up around 15 minutes after I went back to bed, and Lara woke up about 2 hours later. They both went to the beach for a quick morning swim, played table tennis in the games room and went down for another swim. They came back at 10.30am, around when I woke up thinking it was 7.

Rhea and I played table tennis, which reminded me that one of her first games was in that room and now she’s better than me. Down at the beach, it was windy and only 22 degrees so better for exploring rockpools than swimming for Steve and I, though the girls went in again. Later, on the deck, we had local meat pies followed by raspberry pies for dinner and watched The Emoji Movie and a minor Hugh Grant movie – American Dreamz – while eating them.

Sunday the girls got up at 5:30 and went for a sunrise swim, which was, in their words, “cold and wakening”. They stayed there until we got up at 7:30 to pack up and leave. It was warmer, so I had a swim too, it was extremely refreshing. The girls and I had a long period rock hopping in the rock pools. We finished the snacks we had brought on the beach and I read ‘Lucy By The Sea’ which I thought I had left at the sea as I couldn’t find it for a few days afterwards.

The beach and beautiful Murramarang National Park, with its spotted gums and hidden tiny rockpool worlds, was just what we needed to reconnect. A lot has happened in the three years since we were last there. We’re planning to go back in March for Marcus’s birthday, and hopefully mum and dad will join us.