The Sailor in the Wardrobe. Hugo Hamilton

some kind of situation out of it that he could later tell the lads about, offering them some of Dan’s pink Mikado biscuits maybe, as long as they didn’t mind a few mackerel scales on them as well. Maybe he would have sat down on the bunk with them and shown them Dan’s blue mug with years of brown tea-stain inside or cut up a mackerel in front of them until they said, Jesus, let me fuckin’ out of here. But I had no way of inventing a life around myself. I had the weakness and I could do nothing until they got bored at last and left of their own accord, laughing and smoking as they walked away up the pier.

      And then I could see Dan’s boat coming back into the harbour. There was a buzz of motorbikes and the harbour lads were all returning as well and within minutes they were sitting outside the shed again with Packer talking.

      ‘Wait till you hear this,’ he said.

      He said he was about to tell us the most amazing story. He had just come back in from being out on the water with Dan. They had been pulling up the pots, when they suddenly came across a lobster that had rubber bands already tied around his claws. I’m not joking you, Packer kept saying. There was Dan, complaining about the lobster being less plentiful, and then they came across a lobster that had put his own rubber bands on as if he had given himself up.