I turned and ran backwards, swept along on a wave of nostalgia as I watched my footprints fade. Too soon, though, I reached the track fringed by the bristling silhouettes of marram grass—the track that would lead me home to Jem. I picked my way along it with a little difficulty; the shoulder-high scrub blocked the moonlight so I couldn’t see my feet, and I stumbled on the low steps and the exposed roots of the boobiallas and banksias. At one point, a blackberry bramble reached out and snagged my jumper—funny I remember that so clearly. I wasn’t quite ready to go home, to leave the night air, to see Jem. So, when I arrived at the road I wandered a little way along it, heading north to where the dark hills of the Forestier Peninsula huddle forward, as if closing in on the neck, rather than south and home. On the Eaglehawk Bay side of the neck, I spied flickering torchlight. Somewhat absently, I wandered towards it.

When I got close, I realised I’d happened upon Flo and Greek Poppy.

I don’t know why everyone calls her Greek Poppy. She’s the only Poppy on the peninsula, so it’s not like they’re differentiating her from another Poppy, and nobody calls Con, Greek Con. But still, this place can be so insular and set in its ways, and intermixed with this is the way odd and, at times, non-PC things catch on. Perhaps it was just a way of explaining why she talked funny and did strange things, like cook with olive oil and pickle octopuses, which as I later learnt was viewed as a radical thing to do when she and Con first arrived. It’s kind of like how there’s a guy who lives down here who obviously has some kind of disability, and everyone calls him Loony George, or just Loon for short. They don’t do this in a mean-spirited way; they call him Loon in a fond and matey way, and he basks in their affection. It seems backward and kind of discriminatory to me, but he’s so widely loved for who he is, and he’s included in the community and seems happy enough with his nickname. And like Jem said to me, who am I to judge?

But I digress.

I could hear Flo and Greek Poppy murmuring to each other; their words drifted to me nonsensically from across the water. They were wading, near to waist-deep, and the rippling water caught the light from their head torches and refracted it back in a kaleidoscope of planes and angles.

Greek Poppy began splashing violently and called to Flo. I couldn’t quite make out what had happened, what was happening; the darkness obscured all but that which was lit up in the bands of light, which were now fanning to and fro with the busy movement of the women’s heads. Together, they began to move to the shore. At one point, Flo looked down at what they were holding between them long enough for me to identify the suckered whorl of a limb. Octopus. Bundled up in Flo’s net and held at bay by Greek Poppy’s gaff.