‘This is Nettie,’ my grandmother said, showing a photograph of a startled woman in a neck brace, lips drawn back displaying long, colourful teeth with gums in retreat. ‘She reminded me of my old horse when I first saw her, so I had to be extra nice to her after thinking things like that. She had no one, no one in the world, so Chappy and I went to get her in the weekends – picked her up on Saturday and took her back to the old folks’ home on Sunday. Those old things wrote to us, you know, sent us all these cards and photos. I went to their funerals if I could, and if I knew.

‘The buses kept us going for a time. They were not always full of old people. Some were chartered coaches on their way up north, calling in because the tearoom was considered a good lunch stop. We still had our salesmen and drivers, and some of our old faithfuls kept coming and putting their feet under the tables. We were ticking along but could’ve gone under if it hadn’t been for the oldies.’

Leaving our water jug, glasses and the photograph album on the seat, we walked, as we often did, along the paths and stepping stones and over the bridge to the front of the section. We sat together on a large concaved rock, which still held its warmth though the garden was being swallowed by fading light.

‘When your grandfather became ill in the winter of 1980, his spirit drifting and fluttering here and there filling all the rooms, I closed the tearoom. He survived that first year but not the next. Flew. I didn’t think I’d ever open the tearoom again.’

Oriwia kept the doors shut for two years. She spent a month of each year visiting her family in Auckland. While at home, she did little but sit in the garden, or walk about in it, ‘poking here and there, interfering’. But she wasn’t a gardener, she was a trader.

One morning, she crossed the road, walked to the tearoom and went about cleaning ovens, shelves and floors, because you have to get on with life.

‘It kept me going, and makes enough money to employ a gardener. Do you want a tearoom, Daniel? You could turn it into one of these cafés doing all kinds of coffees – mochaccinos, cappuccinos, every other kind of cino – all-day breakfasts, hot-food cabinet, salad and chips. It would need a refit.’ Then she answered her own question. ‘Of course not. Of course you don’t want a tearoom. That’s just me trying to keep you here. No. There’s no future for eating in this place now. It’s turned into a retirement town – wheelchairs and crutches, shopping trolleys. Land Rovers, station wagons and BMWs do their shopping elsewhere.