This is real, I found myself thinking. This is life, stripped back. No bullshit. There’s nothing transcendent about this scene; this is a scene of immersion. Thigh deep in the salt and elbow deep in the ink and slime.

‘Yep. Octopus,’ she agreed. ‘Gonna pickle ’em up tomorrow, eh, Pop?’

‘Ναι,’ Greek Poppy nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Gonna get another one? Need a hand?’ I found myself asking, somewhat impulsively.

‘Nah, not tonight. Be honest with you, we’ve got too many already.’

‘Oh.’

Flo must’ve sensed my disappointment, because she said kindly: ‘Tell you what, though, come round to my place tomorrow at, say, ten? Eh, Pop?’

‘Yes, ten.’

‘We’ll teach you to pickle ’em. Like I said, we got a bit carried away tonight, and they make a good Chrissy present. But you have to tell people they won’t be good to eat for a week or so. Let the vinegar settle and all that.’

‘Righto. Cheers. Ten. Sounds good!’

Jem was slightly frantic when I rematerialised.

‘Where’ve you been? You’ve been gone ages!’

‘I ran into Flo Seaborne and Greek Poppy, octopussing,’ I told him. ‘Is that how you say it? Octopussing? Octopus fishing doesn’t seem right—they’re not fish.’

He shushed me and pulled me into a bear hug. ‘You know I love you, and that’s what matters, don’t you?’

‘They’re going to show me how to pickle them tomorrow,’ I told him, then added: ‘I love you, too.’

‘And just so you know,’ Jem murmured, ‘I think “octopussing” is slang for an eight-woman orgy. That wasn’t what Greek Poppy and Flo were up to, was it?’

I laughed out a snort that was half a scoff, then reached up, looped my arms around his neck and lifted my chin so that he could kiss me on the mouth.

The next day I headed over to Flo’s house at ten. I drove, although I probably should have walked; I just wasn’t sure how much octopus I’d be carting home with me and, while walkable, it’s a bit of a trek from her place to ours. We live on the Pirates Bay side of Eaglehawk Neck, down towards the jetty, but tucked up in the bush, and looking east towards sunrise and ocean, while Flo and Poppy both live on the north face of the Tasman Peninsula, looking across Eaglehawk Bay to the bush of the Forestier Peninsula. On the southern side of the isthmus, you either look north or east; you either live perched on the north-facing slope and nestled into the black peppermints and she-oaks, or on the eastern plane of the hills in one of the cliff-hanging McMansions or in the shacky bush suburb, tucked up against the national park.