The first time Jem went tuna fishing, back when he was a boy, he had been appalled by the prospect of wielding a gaff. The tuna was churning up great swathes of turbulence and whenever it smacked against the surface, it kicked up rooster-tails of spray. It was thrashing against the hold of the hook in its lip—the hook, which was the trap hidden in the lure, which was connected to the line, which was traced up through the guides of Jem’s fishing rod, and coiled around his reel. They needed to get it into the boat. Or rather, Jem needed to get it in the boat. This was his kill, his responsibility; he was old enough now. Jem’s dad had taken the rod from him and instructed him to take up the gaff and land the fish himself.

‘But gaff it while it’s alive?’ he’d asked his father, eyeing the hook of the gaff dubiously. ‘Won’t it hurt it?’

‘The quicker we can get this done, the quicker we can put the fish out of its misery,’ Jem’s father had said.

So, Jem had got it done.

There was so much blood.

Later, his father had taken the time to explain: ‘If you’re going to take a life, Jem, then you need to do it quickly. Fast is humane. Remember that: fast is humane. Never leave an animal to suffer, even if it’s just a fish.’

‘But what about abalone?’ Jem had asked.

‘They’re not complex enough organisms to suffer,’ Jem’s dad had replied.

‘Is that true?’ Lucy asked, years later.

‘I think so,’ Jem said. ‘And I mean, there’s got to be a cut-off point somewhere, doesn’t there?’

‘So, it might as well be at the point where you make your living?’ she teased.

‘Yeah, well, what can you do?’ He smiled. ‘I was born into it.’

‘It’s that thing about the faces, isn’t it?’ Lucy mused. ‘We’re more likely to feel empathetic towards critters with faces, and while those poor abalone have those fat black lips, they’re faceless.’

And maybe that thing about faces, maybe that was when the rules came into effect: we’re more likely to feel empathetic towards critters with faces and we should let that empathy guide us. Except some of us have no empathy at all; some of us are untouched by the rules. Some of us shoot seals and leave them to die. Some of us are shameless. Utterly, utterly shameless.

Like these men, here, these men standing in front of him on the jetty.

He knows they’re shameless: the brothers, Rob, Shayne and Pete. He knows their names, although he can’t remember which is which. Eaglehawk Neck is a small place, and their family has had a shack down here for generations. The brothers are a good handful of years older than Jem and were rougher and lewder in ways that fascinated and appalled him when he was a kid, watching them at the jetty, squidding near them but not with them—never with them. He would watch the way they’d leave fish to drown in air, catching more than they’d need and kicking the bodies, which had turned leathery in the sun, back into the water as they mooched away.