‘You know, I’m not sure.’ Lucy shrugs. ‘It’s just something I read. They’ll be leaving soon, I suppose,’ she continues. ‘I read about that, too. They leave first, and then a bit later, the chicks follow them. They don’t have to be shown where to go. Something in them just knows that the Bering Sea is the place to be in the Tassie winter.’

‘They reckon it’s ’cos they can’t stand the footy,’ Flo yells.

‘What?’

‘Well, they disappear just as the season starts, then reappear just after the grand final.’

‘Should call them cricket birds,’ Harry quips.

Lucy chuckles. She’s silent for a moment or two. Then she asks a little sadly: ‘Do either of you feel bad about killing their babies?’

Harry and Flo both shrug.

‘You can’t look at these things like that,’ Flo says again.

Lucy’s silent for another moment, then she asks: ‘Do either of you know how the moon and Easter works?’

Harry and Flo both shrug.

Lucy laughs. ‘God, you should see the two of you perched up there like cockies. You’re so bloody similar!’

Then, a couple of minutes later: ‘Doesn’t it all make you feel alive?’ Her eyes are white and gleaming and she’s grinning at him and Flo widely—or is he imagining it, or is it just him she’s grinning at? His jumper is beating against her body and her hair is fluttering and whipping about on the wind. It’s like her whole body is caught up in the energy of the evening.

Seeing her like this, Harry thinks it’s better than nipples any day.

He takes the tiller back when they get into the bay and, as he eases off the juice, he becomes aware of the smell of mutton-bird that hangs about the boat. It’s a two-tiered stench: the rounder, musty stench of the birds themselves and the harsh, acidic stench of the vomit on Lucy and her clothes, crumpled on the floor by the bucket of fish. When they were going fast, the scent had been ushered away on the wind, but now they’re puttering slowly towards the jetty it hangs above them like fog.

‘It’s pretty full-on, hey?’ Lucy says, as if reading his mind.

‘Makes me nostalgic. Smells like childhood.’ Flo smiles.

‘That’s just what I was thinking,’ Harry says. ‘Except the vomit. That just smells rancid.’

‘That’s because Mandy and I were always cleaner about it than Lucy,’ Flo says.

He guides the boat to the wharf, which, in the twilight, is lit up by yellow streetlights. There are no other boats about, no other cars with boat trailers waiting in the car park. He flicks the motor into neutral, loops the rope around a bollard, climbs up onto the jetty and jogs over to where the car and trailer are parked. He then reverses down the boat ramp and his mother drives the boat up onto the trailer.