‘You want to sell them, that’s what you want to do,’ he said. He fished in his pocket and brought out a penny. ‘Look, I could do with a bit.’

‘Put your money away,’ she said. ‘Cut yourself a piece. Knife in the cloth.’

So he unwrapped the knife, cut himself a slice and took great bites. With eyes sticking out like pickled onions, he sent black pips flying, first from one corner of his mouth then the other. He shoved the awful socks into his boots, tied the laces together and slung them round his neck, walking away on pale, tender feet that flapped through the dust like two landed tarakihi, off to get a free ride on the train.

‘Beauties they are. You want to sell them, Moana-Rose.’

As he went, she thought about setting up a stall somewhere and selling people’s produce for them. She could take a portion of the price and people would have a little cash to pay against their shop accounts.

Across the road from the station was a small bakery, quite run down. Oriwia remembered her father stopping there on market days when they were little and buying ginger kisses for Moana-Rose and her to eat on the way home. What she looked forward to most on those days was going into this place of delicious smells and peering under lace-edged covers which had pink, blue and yellow flowers fancyworked on them. Plated under the covers were butterfly cakes, peanut brownies, vanilla slices, fruit squares, melting moments and the ginger kisses.

Oriwia had been told about the fancy stitching and fancy baking her mother did. It was all true. On a shelf at home were embroidered cloths, runners and three sets of worked pillowcases. These were all so precious to her that she never used them.

And in a kitchen drawer was a notebook, taken from a small suitcase which their father had opened for them one day. It contained her mother’s notes and recipes collected from Maori Women’s Welfare League meetings. From the notebook, and with advice from one aunty and another, her mother had taught herself to bake. It made Oriwia happy, when she was complimented on her baking, to be told she took after her mother.

These days the bakery was dilapidated, paint peeling, boards warped and shelving all lopsided, as though the whole little building had been given a shove and with the next push might topple sideways. No worse than her own shop, she reminded herself. Her own place was also making its way back into the ground. There were no cakes in the bakery these days, only bread, pies and buns, and most of those done to order.