The sealife rescue centre was relocating so the cormorant came to live with me, on the fifth floor of my concrete block, above the recovering addicts. It wasn’t old, that much I could tell from the few pale feathers still showing on its breast.

I did not remove the hook from its mouth. The vet did that. All I did was force feed it antibiotics and hope.

“Bird,” I said, “I’m a hopeless romantic.”

“Girl,” it said, “me too.”

(Its back was turned when it said this in the hallway. It was going for a bath.)

Two friends

helped me carry

fifty litres of seawater

from the car park

twice a week

for a month

and a half.

(Seaweed blocked the drain, but we learned from this: we poured it through a sieve.)

In this way, the worst of the winter passed. Then, one day, the cormorant hopped up onto my ottoman and spread its wings to dry. We knew that we had to accept this. We had spoken about being ready for this moment, but, of course, we were not.

We wept in the lift.

We wandered the beach thinking every cormorant we saw was ours.

We had clumsy, half-hearted sex in the car.

We laughed in the waiting room until the receptionist had a word.

We went to the shop

and stared at the shelves

until people stared at us.

So three of us stood at the checkout while I paid for a litre of milk, then we took that home.