She loves it. But she’s been noticing, this last week or so, how its arms are becoming more and more rigid in their movements. They don’t flow like they once did, and the thought makes her feel strangely nostalgic.

She’s late. Nearly terribly so. She tears herself away from the octopus’s gaze, shimmies into the merino and skirt after all, tugs on her boots and dashes out to the car.

‘We’re on,’ Kat declares, prodding Lucy’s skin and Lucy’s heart sinks a little.

‘You’re sure?’ she asks. ‘I’m not still moving?’

‘Well, a little I s’pose,’ Kat says, still fingering Lucy’s chest. ‘I mean we’re all moving as we age, aren’t we? But I reckon this is healed enough to get started.’ She looks into Lucy’s face and seems to notice something there.

What’s there? Lucy wonders. She wouldn’t have a clue how she feels. Does Kat know?

‘Assuming you still want to,’ Kat offers. ‘There’s no judgement from me if you don’t.’

Lucy opens her face into a bright smile. ‘Of course I want to,’ she says. ‘This is fantastic news.’

‘Righto,’ Kat says. She rummages through a pile of papers and pulls out the design. There will be so many octopuses to writhe motionlessly alongside that first one, which Lucy knows will always be her favourite. There will be whole bodies here, the curl of a limb there, and eyes—hooded eyes, everywhere.

‘Let’s start with the outlines,’ Kat says. ‘If you don’t need to rush home, we can get a fair chunk of them done today, except in this patch.’ Kat strokes a finger across a particularly scarred section of skin. ‘We might have to wait a while yet for this bit to be ready enough. But that’s all good—we can keep an eye on it as we go.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Lucy says, faux chipper. What’s wrong with her? If it had been a different time in her life she would have thought she was pre-menstrual.

Kat raises her eyebrows. ‘You sure?’ she asks again.

‘Yes,’ Lucy says, calmly. This time her voice is plausibly earnest. She lies herself on the table. ‘Do your worst.’

‘I’ll bloody do my best, like I always do.’

We’re finally starting properly, Lucy thinks. We’re finally starting properly. She should be over the moon, or so she tells herself as she winces at the pricking and scratching of the needle as Kat gets to work. But all she can think is that this readiness is coming at a cost. The cost is that her skin has healed—or healed enough—which means it’s stopped moving. Which means her first octopus has also stopped moving. She knew it was coming, of course. But it’s one thing to know it’s coming and another to be told that this is how it is now. And so now she knows the truth. She knows it’s over. Her octopus has stilled and become an image, and with every representation Kat adds to her chest, Lucy becomes alone.