I keep seeing her setting out along the beach. The air is bright and light; a bit of wind lifting her fur but nothing to worry about. Her huge paws coming down squashing sand-crabs and pulverising the washed-up pumice. If there were a sudden subsidence of the land and then, over time, great pressure from the overlying burden of detritus and water, her paw marks might one day be found seared in rock, and people would know—if there are still people around with enough nous to see and care—that a bear had walked, at least once, along a beach in south-east Queensland.

Night after night she appears as I’m drifting off, my mind giving up its struggle to make sense of things. Here I’m known as a worrier, a scaremonger. A bit paranoid, I heard a nurse say. Well, this bear is far more effective than the drugs, woefully disguised as three centimetres of vanilla-flavoured gloop-in-a-glass, which assistant nurse Maureen tries to shove down my throat to get me through the night without yelling and frightening the old man on the other side of the wall. But they don’t listen to me. I see them exchange glances across my bed.