After Oriwia had pulled her daughter from Hawai‘i, she thought that was the end of whatever there was between Binnie and Lani. So it was, for more than two years. In the meantime, seeing Lani so unsettled and despondent, Aki found work for him in a ship’s galley, hoping to divert him from sadness. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. What the ship did do was put him ashore one day in Wellington where he and Binnie met by chance in Cable Car Lane.

Everyone was to blame for the condition that Binnie was now in on this Sunday morning – Aki, Ela, Ti, Daphne, all of whom must’ve known what was going on, according to Oriwia.

‘Out of my sight,’ Oriwia ordered. ‘I don’t want to see any of you ever again.’

Binnie and Lani left, but Aki did not, despite Oriwia’s ‘You too. Out. Out.’ He sat in an armchair and picked up a Woman’s Weekly.

At the table by the window, Oriwia tore fabric and pattern pieces from top to bottom, stamped off into the kitchen and began cleaning out cupboards and scrubbing the floor – not usual tasks for a Sunday.

Late in the afternoon, she looked in on Aki, bringing tea and cake.

‘He’ll do anything for her,’ Aki said. ‘Anything except –’

‘Except leave her,’ Oriwia said.

‘But if he did leave –’

‘She’d go with him.’

‘You think he’s not good enough. I’m insulted on behalf of my son,’ Aki said. ‘You and your stuck-up ideas.’

‘Go and get them,’ she said. ‘Take my car.’

He can marry my daughter,’ she said when they returned, ignoring the couple and speaking to Aki, ‘if he comes here and learns to fix cars.’

‘What if they’d refused, Grandson?’ my grandmother asked me. ‘What if they’d left me?’

Binnie was twenty-one, had money of her own and could easily have gone and made her home in Hawai‘i. Oriwia planned that they’d go to Wellington the next day and make a booking at the registry office, but she hadn’t got all the words out before she was interrupted by Aki.

‘Our children will have a proper wedding,’ he told her, ‘at the marae, with a minister, followed by a feast in a large marquee, all witnessed and celebrated by their elders and families. Your daughter will have a proper wedding gown. My son’s –’

‘Your son, your son,’ Oriwia said with her voice rising. ‘Your son has ruined my daughter –’

‘Your daughter is not ruined, she’s having a baby. A baby, Oriwia.’

‘Wedding gown? Wedding gown, with a bump in front you mean?’

‘Not a bump, a baby.’

‘Shame.’

‘Not shame, a baby.’