My father put the boy against his shoulder and walked backwards and forwards across the front of the stove. He did this for quite a long time. I wondered if he had ever walked like that with me. I tried to remember.

‘And what’s he called?’ he asked.

‘Marama,’ my mother said.

It was the first I’d heard of it, and I wondered if Mum had just thought of it at that moment. It was a very good name.

Apart from the full-lung bawl that Moonface let out anytime I left him, he was the easiest of babies, according to Mum. A few weeks after he was born he was sleeping the whole night through. He was never sick or feverish, hardly ever cried and began taking solid food at an early age. When the time came, his teeth popped through his gums uncomplaining. I told Mum he should sleep in my bedroom as no one except for me had to sleep in a room by themselves. So when he was six months old we shifted his cot.

In the mornings when Mum or Dad came to wake me, Moonface would already be sitting up looking through the bars. What a yell went up as I threw on my cow clothes and ran off to milk Tui. It was bad enough being booted in the heart by his big-mouth bellow when I went off to school in the mornings. I couldn’t do anything about that. However, I made up my mind that it would be easier if I took him with me everywhere else I went.

The school we attended was four miles away by road, but there were shortcuts we could take through the trees. One afternoon I had to take the long way home so I could call in to the store for Mum, who wanted a packet of tea. I walked with the storekeeper’s daughters – Moana-Rose who was dark and skinny and Oriwia, who was fat and walnut. (Yes.) They were our adopted sisters. Very pretty. (Okay?) Oriwia was a year older than me and wore her hair in one long plait that went down to her backside. I intended to marry her. Gave her hair a good pull on the way and she hit me with her bag.

Unlike the rest of us, Oriwia and Moana-Rose had a school bag. I happened to know that they both had shoes too, but they hid them in the bushes on their way to school and put them back on before they arrived home. (Because you didn’t want to be skites.)