‘Don’t worry,’ Paa said. ‘She’ll be back.’

‘With an apology,’ I said.

‘And without her daughters. Ha, ha.’

My poor Lani. Personal experience had taught me how consuming new love can be – how it can sting, bring you out in a cold sweat, how tender and crushed you can feel. Yet, though I had known uncertainty in love, which was like a grab to the throat, unlike Lani I had not known rejection or been forbidden. Oriwia must have known what it was like, too, as she waited for me to return from the sea to put her proposal to Chappy all those years before.

My son lost all his exuberance and spoke of joining a ship. I asked him to wait until I could get harbour work again, as on returning from Tokyo I’d been unable to go straight back into my old job. This meant that I was away at sea much more than I wanted to be and Lani was needed at home. ‘But don’t give up on love,’ I said, though to be truthful I thought the situation impossible. Oriwia was a determined woman and little Binnie’s heart could change once she made new friends and saw more of life.

A letter arrived for Ela two or three months later, in which Oriwia attempted to explain that she had certain careers in mind for her daughters and was determined they would complete their training and education before thinking of love, marriage and children. She said she had acted wrongly in leaving the way she did and was sorry for the hurt this would have caused. She explained that the hopes she’d had for the visit had come to nothing and that she’d been feeling unwell most of the time. In the last part of her letter, she had words to say about Lani – to do with his fine looks, his manners, his good nature and kind disposition, his good humour.

It infuriated me. Why bother to apologise when the message between the lines was saying that Lani wasn’t good enough for her daughter?

Anyway, there was something Oriwia didn’t know about my Lani and her Binnie – but that’s getting ahead of the story.

Chapter 20

Oriwia

‘For a month after I returned,’ Oriwia said, ‘I went about murdering my pots and pans, mistreating fruit, vegetables and loaves of bread, and threatening my daughters. But what good did that do me? You have to get on with life. I settled down, thought about my situation and decided there were things I needed to do, some things I needed to find out.’