There’s something about the flawless rhythm of the whole thing that makes him feel like he’s stepped into his dad’s life: this is a routine that he’d watched his parents perform time and again when he was a boy, either waiting impatiently in the boat, doing bombs from the old jetty if the weather was fine and the tide high enough, or gambolling in the tray of the ute while his mother shouted angrily from the boat for him to sit still god dammit. Except when she and Auntie Mandy went mutton-birding, his mother would never drive the boat—that was his dad’s job—except, that is, for when she drove it, every single time, up onto the trailer. His father would be sitting behind the wheel of the old ute, cigarette hanging off his lower lip, keeping an eye on her in the rear-view mirror. Harry remembers standing in the tray of the ute, pressing his face to the window and watching his father’s pale, watercolour blue eyes lock on her in the rear-view mirror. He remembers his father’s gaze sliding to his, remembers the quick wink his father had given him before his eyes tracked back to the figure poised by the tiller, watching her revving the motor, easing the motor, revving the motor again as she edged the boat up onto the trailer—watching her, just as Harry is watching her in the rear-view mirror now.

Perhaps that’s why mutton-birding had seemed such a mysterious thing to him as a boy: his mother would disappear in the afternoon in his dad’s ute, towing his dad’s tinny, once every year and reappear later that night—and it was always on a night when the sky was lit up by the orb of the Easter full moon—smelling like mutton-birds and beer.

Harry tows them up onto the flat and jumps out of the ute to sort out the boat for the drive home. He’s vaguely aware of the sound of an engine while he ratchets the strap, but it doesn’t register. Not really. Then he hears his mother hiss: ‘Oh shit, it’s the fuzz!’

He would have laughed at her melodrama if, at her words, his throat hadn’t closed over with anxiety. He looks up and, sure enough, Mitch Saunders is climbing out of the cop car.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

He glances at Lucy and Flo, both of whom are hovering nervously by his side, and the former of whom is still shivering, still wearing nothing but his jumper.

Never mind the birds, Mitch is gonna have a field day about that, Harry thinks uneasily.

‘Finish packing up the boat,’ he mutters to his mother and then begins to walk towards Mitch.

‘Well I’ll be. Mitch Saunders. Look at you,’ he calls. ‘When’d you turn into such a straight’—and then he stops up short. He can’t finish the sentence. He was going to say when’d you turn into such a straight cunt, but he can’t say it in front of Lucy, let alone his mother, and he’s feeling so anxious, no other word comes to mind. Fuck fuck fuck.