And that’s the thing, isn’t it? So much comes down to the specific emotional composition of moments: how much empathy do you feel right there and then? Enough to throw yourself in front of a car in an attempt to save a pregnant octopus? Apparently. Enough to refrain from breaking the neck of a baby bird? Apparently not. And then the emotional fallout is the emotional fallout; a whole other kettle of fish. But she’ll deal with that later—right now, she’ll love her body.

Thank you, knitted knockers, for bringing about this moment, she thinks. She traces the lines of her scars and smiles up into the night sky. She feels like she could burst with joy, with poignancy, with everything whirring and cascading through her veins.

How did I know that this night was precisely what I needed? she wonders. What a weird thing to anticipate. And yet she did anticipate it, and it’s brought her whole body to life again.

She’s alive, with her octopuses that writhe and flow, so imperceptibly on her living skin, and terrorise living fish.

She was alive, laughing with Flo and Harry; mutton-birding with the Seabornes.

She was alive, with her arm thrust in a burrow.

She was alive.

Harry had glanced back, only once, and quickly at that. Lucy had been squatting at the edge of a rockpool wearing nothing but her undies, leaning forward to wash her jeans and jumper. She looked like a child, peering down into the pool and perhaps poking a finger into the whiskery mouth of a sea anemone or harassing a scuttling crab.

‘I’m not sure whether we should eat them on Easter after all,’ his mother is saying to him. He’d already waded out to retrieve the boat, and had brought it to the rock shelf, where his mother is currently standing, nattering. ‘We’re having your brothers and all down, and Lucy’s probably gonna be with the Allenbys. I reckon we should make a special night for us. Just the three of us, you know?’

‘Yeah. Let’s,’ Harry agrees. ‘We probably don’t have enough birds for everyone anyway.’ They only have four. Lucy had gotten one more, and Harry had only gotten one. He’d found it hard to navigate the burrow with his big hands.

‘Here she comes. Hold the boat still for me, Harry, so I can get in.’

He looks up. Lucy’s skipping from rock to rock towards them. She’s put her singlet and black jeans back on but is carrying her sodden jumper.