I was welcomed all round and, once seated, another woman came from the back of the house bringing a large platter, on it a fish which was hand to elbow in length and as thick as my thigh, smothered in the milk of coconut, fruits and poi. When the dish was placed in my hands I offered it round, but it was obviously meant just for me. I broke off pieces, dipping and eating, knowing I could eat the lot. One less tooth was no disadvantage to that.

About the woman who brought the fish, which is the whole point of this story. I could’ve begun where we are now, with the fish on a plate, instead of going on about the tooth. But I must give honour to the tooth. It was the tooth, that rotten thing, which found me love. What would my life have been otherwise? On that night there was the distraction of food and so many questions to answer about home and family and travels that I didn’t realise I’d been bowled, even though I knew there was something making me breathless.

It was getting late and I explained that I needed to leave as I had to be on board by morning. I intended finding my way back to the road, just hoping there would still be vehicles going my way at this time of night.

‘Go with Ela,’ people said. ‘On the workers’ lorry, leaving at midnight.’

I mean, you did see beauty there in Hawai‘i. Girls. Dancers. You could look at these beauties and be struck. Looking at them you could feel oiled and ignited. They were the postcard girls who loved the whole world. Not on beaches really, that’s not where you saw them. Not dancing under palm trees or anything like that. No, but on the arms of sailors who were not as backward as me, or occasionally in restaurants waiting on tables. But I’m not talking postcards when I mention Ela. Postcards didn’t show you the dark-skinned ones, the ones over thirty with crooked teeth, the big ones with their hair tied back for work.

Beside me in the lorry, skin touching, Ela was telling her companions that this was a new brother, giving them my history and geography. Not getting it right from what I was hearing. She told them about the tooth.

When this was through and the workers, mainly women, turned to other conversations, I broke the silence between us by mentioning the two boys.

‘Their fathers were bastards,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how I could’ve fallen for the same old story from blue-eyed boatmen twice in a row.’

I thought I should shut up about the boys.

We sat in silence until she said, ‘They’re filthy pigs.’

I didn’t know what to say.

‘That last one, father of the younger one, pissed on my cooking fire. What do you think of that?’