What they did was bad; he knew this, even as a kid. Bad in a sinister way. It was worse than the mere fact that they had pointlessly taken lives; it was that there was something in them that had allowed them to do it so carelessly.

And what was perhaps more shocking to Jem than the fact that they did it, was the fact that they didn’t get in trouble. There seemed to be no consequences for their behaviour. That was how he learnt that the world is a fucked place.

He learnt all sorts of other things from those boys as well. He learnt that if you acted like you owned a place, maybe you did. He learnt this when, one raucous evening, once they were a little older, they got blind drunk and so foul-mouthed they drove all the other people who were enjoying having a fish and a sundowner scurrying from the jetty and they didn’t seem to care two hoots. It was like they thought they owned the place and could do whatever they wanted, and everyone just let them, him included (but what was he going to do? he was only a kid). And he learnt things about girls from them—about girls and boys. He’d never even thought about the fact that you needed a plan of attack if you were ‘going in for the finger’. Are you better off going down the front of her undies, or up and in the side? The eldest of the brothers and his mates debated this one evening. They never did reach a consensus. The eldest had just gotten his P-plates and he and his mates were down at the shack, no younger brothers, no adults: just the boys. Jem heard what they shouted at May and her mates that same night. The Invitation. They were just having a laugh. Boys will be boys, Jem learnt, and he knows the type of men those coarse, careless, boofhead boys would have grown into.

Just having a laugh. Always laughing, never caring.

And now they’re adults, with kids, like this boy here, who’s peering up at Jem with what looks like a combination of awe and distrust.

Jem can imagine how the fishing trip today would have started: the father saying to the son, ‘Let’s make a man out of you’, and the boy lighting up. And now he is a man; he caught his first tuna; soon his balls will drop and he’ll workshop strategies for fingering girls.

The fish is already filleted and on ice, which could mean anything or nothing at all. If Jem didn’t know their type, he would think it meant nothing at all.

He tests the water a little and asks them if they heard gunshot and tells them about the seals, watching them for any sign of guilt. The kid’s eyes widen, and flicker between his father and his uncles, who are all gruff bravado in a telling way.