‘Hang on,’ May interjected, eyeing her brother and father sceptically. ‘That sounds like a load of bull. I’m pretty sure octopuses aren’t migratory.’

‘Well, some of them are so desperate to get to the ocean they try to walk across land, but they don’t make it. And—’ May started to say something, but Scott raised his voice, cutting her off.

‘They’ve examined them,’ he said. ‘All the specimens so far have been females carrying eggs.’

I was shocked by how much Scott’s words affected me; by the way they instantly stained my memories of that evening watching Flo and Poppy, then the morning helping them with … what? The ink of maternal desperation? I shook my head—I mean, how melodramatic can you get?—and shushed myself. That’s just life, isn’t it? And it’s like Flo always says: you can’t look at these things like that.

Meanwhile, May said: ‘They’ve examined them? Who’s they?’

Scott took a slug of his beer, eyed his daughter, puffed himself up, and said: ‘Well …’

‘Well what?’ May smirked.

‘Well, people,’ Scott said, digging at the wax in his ear with his pinkie. ‘You know. Scientists and all that.’

May snorted. ‘Ohhhh, “scientists”?’ she scoffed, making quotation marks with her fingers. ‘Really? What scientists?’

Knowing Scott wasn’t one to back down, and knowing May’s a chip off the old block even though she does her best to deny it, I took out my phone. ‘Here—I’ll google it,’ I offered, hoping to curb the brewing argument.

There was a moment or two of silence as I sifted through web pages.

‘You know, I reckon out of everything down there, octopuses are the creepiest, and the cheekiest,’ Scott mused. ‘I remember this one time, diving off Maria Island. I’d been feeling pretty spooked as it was, because there’d been a few sightings of a big shark in the area. You know what it’s like. You catch a glimpse of something in your peripherals then wham! The adrenalin hits, but it’s just kelp swaying, and all you can hear is the boom boom boom of your heart. I was at this place we used to call the supermarket. There was this series of shelves stacked one on top of another and the crays would sit in them, lined up like groceries at the shop, waiting to be plucked. Bulls with tails as big as footballs. We loved going there because it was such easy picking on the cray-front—always grabbed a couple for dinner, not that you could do that now. Anyway, I’d found this overhang right at the bottom that was dripping with abs. I was chipping them off the roof and letting them fall to the sand, when out of the darkness something grabbed my wrist. Well, it scared the shit out of me, and, I joke you not—I sucked my mouthpiece bloody halfway down my windpipe! I came out of the cave feet first and gagging like a hooker—’

‘Dad!’