Harry, on the other hand. She doesn’t think she’s heard him venture enough of an opinion to be a hypocrite. Instead he’s all considered motion, always moving steadily with a deliberateness that both animates and contains him in a way that would be, in busy, erratic Jem, unimaginable.

She shouldn’t have done it.

Oh but Harry. Gosh, Harry.

He just gets it, doesn’t he? Kat had said. And she’s right; somehow he does.

Lucy’s ashamed by the lust that shudders through her.

It’s just. There’s something about him. He’s a younger, quieter, masculine Flo. A masculine Flo, with his broad shoulders and sinewy muscles; his rough stubble and deep rumbling, mumbling voice that echoes in his chest. And his hands. His long, strong fingers tracing up and down her spine, gripping her buttocks, spreading her thighs, slipping inside her.

But still, Lucy wonders if half the reason she’s drawn to him is because of his mother, who so enchanted her that night as she waded, yarning gibberish with Greek Poppy in torch beam and moonlight, like a woman yanked from another time.

Last night she’d felt safe, adored. So thoroughly adored.

And then the octopus.

No, nothing means anything anyway, except the octopus that suddenly, shockingly, made sense in a way she can’t quite articulate and isn’t that just it—isn’t that just the crux of it? Because what’s in an articulation, in a word? What’s in a breast? What’s in an octopus, a tattoo? Why mark yourself? What’s in a word, anyway? Surely nothing but air? Air in words, air in no words. She can feel the words’ absence clogging her throat like they’ve solidified into a knot of inexpressible meaning, into a micro-weather system expanding, pressure so tightly spun it hurts, makes her throat ache and throb in time with the pulse of her heart.

The octopus’s arm between her legs. The shock, the violation which is perhaps only a violation if it knew what it was doing—knew the taboo it was breaking.

Bestiality.

But no, The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife didn’t speak to her of that, but of something else.

What did the octopus taste? Touch? See? Know? What does the octopus remember—what does it think of her, even now?

The tentacle tweaking the nipple, the octopus’s face buried in the woman’s vulva, which bristles with pubic hair. Harry’s face, in and among her hair. She can’t stop thinking about the octopus’s beak, about the beak she discarded, like it was rubbish, when she cut the octopus’s head off that other night, about the boy at high school who told her that as women age their clitorises grow—protrude and turn into beaks if they get stimulated too much over the course of the woman’s life.

‘Sticky beak,’ he guffawed.

The thought worried her so much she didn’t masturbate for months.

Jake begged and begged to come, but Shayne told him no.

He told him it was because they were going at the crack of, so he’d be too tired at school the next day.