She bites down on a sob and throws herself into the swell. Her blind arms search for the slimy body, for one last touch because she knows it’s going to die. But the sand-churned currents jostle her back and she can’t find it. She swims out, frog-kicking and spluttering as waves hit her in the face, ducking under, her hands in front of her, searching around, fossicking through the water.

She doesn’t see the black slab of a set wave rear up because her eyes are smarting with salt and tears. It breaks in a heavy slap, crunching her and throwing her under with empty lungs. She forces her body to go limp as it churns her about. When she hits the sand she anchors herself with her fingers until the turbulence passes, brings her feet beneath her and pushes off, punching through the surface. As her lips open to the clouds, another wave forces itself down her throat, and she’s rolling in a flurry of bubbles, choking and burning with the lack of air and too much saltwater in her belly. Then it all slows and she’s staggering to her hands and knees in the gentle lick of the shallows, vomiting her guts up from the salt or the grief or both. She’s alive and the octopus is swimming out, full of eggs and then it will die. She’s alive and it’s gone. Something in her chest, on her chest, releases. She’s alive and it’s gone to give its life for its eggs. And she’s alive; she’s alive; she’s alive.

Flo opens the door and gasps.

Lucy is all spiralling suckered limbs and hooded eyes and chains of round bruises and sand and vomit and snot and pubic hair and grief.

‘I couldn’t find my clothes,’ she mumbles, then crumples into tears.

Flo reaches out, takes her by the arm and guides her into the bathroom. She sits Lucy in the bath and turns on the shower then leaves her with warm water cascading over her as she sobs, to put the kettle on.

Back in the bathroom, she kneels on the floor next to the bath and doesn’t mind that spray from the shower is misting all over her while she washes Lucy’s hair. She breathes in the soapy lavender scent.

‘What are those marks?’ she asks, quietly. ‘They’re like … hickeys?’

‘Probably from the octopus’s suckers,’ Lucy says miserably.

‘Right,’ Flo murmurs. ‘Fairo.’ She turns the shower off, passes Lucy some towels, then nips back out of the bathroom to turn the kettle off and find Lucy something to wear: some trackie dacks and a T-shirt. Nothing fancy—just comfy.

When Lucy appears in the lounge room, she says, ‘I’m sorry, for what I said before, about the octopuses.’ Her voice is husky from crying.