Some friends who’d visited Australia had told us we had, absolutely had to order a coffee drink called a “flat white.” After lunch at Manly Beach we asked the waitress what a flat white was, and she launched into a description involving lots of milk (not steamed) and a little espresso, concluding with “it’s the weakest coffee drink on the spectrum, cappuccino being the strongest.” So we each ordered a small and decided to enjoy them down at the shore.

We carried them back to where we’d started out on Manly beach. Different people were swimming and surfing now. The little boy I’d seen digging in the morning was nowhere to be seen, but there were several impressive turrets of sand where he’d been and who knows, maybe he was still digging somewhere behind them and out of sight. I sipped my flat white. Yes, it was delicious, but it tasted a little familiar. I lifted up the top and looked at it.

“These look and taste like cafe au laits,” I said.

Michael, who’d been enjoying his, looked disappointed. “I thought it was an Australian thing,” he said.

“Well, they’re very, very good cafe au laits,” I told him.