‘You ever set a net before?’

‘Nope. Jem’s not really a net man. He worries about the by-catch.’

Is she having a go? Harry wonders uneasily. Does she know his father had been a commercial fisherman? Is it just Jem? Or is she worried about the by-catch too?

‘Net this size’s not gonna have much if you set it right,’ he mumbles defensively. ‘Won’t be in too long either.’

‘Oh, yeah, I’m sure it’s fine,’ she blusters. ‘It’s just what Jem says. I can help, if you show me what to do.’

So he shows her how to feed the net over the side as he reverses the boat, leaving a dotted line of buoys behind them.

‘Jem, hey? What’s he up to this evening?’ Flo asks.

‘He’s on the west coast for the week. Diving.’

‘Does he dive over there much?’

‘Nah. Not heaps. A bit. Depends on the weather, you know.’ Lucy shrugs as she feeds the last of the net over the gunnel. ‘He loves it,’ she adds. ‘Surfs heaps.’

‘He got pretty fired up about that mako, hey?’

‘What mako?’ Lucy asks.

‘You know, that one that was caught the other day,’ Flo says. ‘They thought it was going to be the biggest one to ever get caught in Tassie waters, but it was just under the record. Col Fitzgerald dropped some flake off for us and said Jem had had a bit of a go at the jetty when they brought it in.’

‘Oh.’ Lucy frowns. ‘He didn’t say anything.’

‘The meat was pretty crappy,’ Flo says. ‘The big ones always are.’

‘But he was pissed at something Sunday evening,’ Lucy continues as if she wasn’t listening. ‘Was that when it was caught?’

‘Would’ve been Sunday, hey Harry?’

‘Yep.’ Harry smiles. ‘Would’ve been Sunday. ’Cos you were so hungover you let me cook without kicking up a stink and you couldn’t get through half the meal.’

‘Nonsense.’ Flo says. ‘I couldn’t get through it because it was an old shark. The fibres were too big and tough to be worth eating.’

‘Keep telling yourself that,’ Harry murmurs with a grin. ‘Now, where to?’

Flo waves her hand towards the northern end of the island. ‘Round a bit.’ He motors in that direction until she says, pointing, ‘Just up here.’

He spots it: the rocky little beach.

‘There’s a sandy, deep channel, right up until that ledge, just there. A perfect park.’ Harry sees where his mother means, and pulls into it. He keeps the motor running while Lucy scrambles up onto the limpet-crusted rock shelf and holds the boat still so Flo can get out. He putters back out until the seafloor is rock-free, throws the anchor over the edge, tests to see it’s grabbed the sand, then kills the motor.

‘I’m gonna take my daks off, Lucy,’ he calls. ‘So, you know …’

‘Bit shy are ya Harry?’ she teases. But she turns away, looking up the shoreline from him.