‘What about strawberries, Mum?’ Jem asked. ‘Why couldn’t we have strawberries on the pav?’

‘“Why couldn’t we have strawberries on the pav?” You sound like a whingey child,’ May teased.

He gave her the finger.

She gave it right back.

Their mother rolled her eyes. ‘There’s no strawberries for the pav because someone didn’t shut the garden gate properly and so the possums got to enjoy them instead of us.’

Scott grimaced.

‘But you could have bought them,’ Jem said.

He did sound like a whingey child.

‘I checked. They’d sold out of the Tasmanian strawberries, and the organic ones they had left were all imported from Queensland, and it just seemed ludicrous to buy them when any other day I could have bought locally.’

‘Locally, hey?’ Scott said, picking up the jar of octopus again. ‘Don’t get much more local than this.’

Ten days of warm weather flickered by in what felt like a montage of Christmas leftovers, New Year’s celebrations, camping with Jem’s mate Zach and his partner, Carrie, in secret spots only accessible by boat, and feeling awkward about the way my incessantly perky breasts sat in my bikini top as I swam and mooched about the beach and campsite.

It was a Saturday. We’d arrived home the afternoon before, and I was bemoaning my return to work on the coming Monday while Jem and I hung the washing out on the line—not a Hills Hoist, too Australiana-kitsch for us; our clothesline was strung up between two blue gums and moonlighted as a possum tightrope.

My phone, which was wedged in my back pocket, rang. I pegged the undies I was holding to the line and wiggled it out. Displayed on the screen was an unknown number—a landline, with an area code local to the peninsula.

‘Hello?’ I answered.

‘Lucy?’ Flo’s voice asked.

‘Flo. How are you going?’

‘Good, good.’

I smiled at her tone, which was brusque and business-like.

‘Busy tonight?’ she asked. ‘Octopuses?’

‘Um,’ I paused.

‘I’m only asking because I thought you was keen. Are you a bit squeamish about killing them or something?’

‘No, it’s not that,’ I was quick to insist, and I realised it was true. I wasn’t squeamish at all. ‘I am, I mean, I was keen.’

‘Great, we’ll see you tonight then.’

‘Flo wants you to go octopussing with her tonight?’ Jem surmised with a seedy smirk once I’d hung up.

I rolled my eyes. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But, I don’t know. After what your dad said, do you think it’s wrong?’

Jem shrugged. ‘They’re just going to die anyway,’ he said. ‘And it’s not like they really matter in the scheme of things.’

This perplexed me. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well, it’s not like they’re a threatened species or anything. They reckon that Maori octopuses are going to be one of the species that will thrive with global warming. And it’s not like they have familial bonds. Like you were saying at Christmas: they die before their eggs hatch, and they live predominantly solitary lives. There’ll be no one and nothing to miss them and the ecosystem won’t suffer for it.’