When night came and Chappy hadn’t returned from the gardens, Oriwia thought he was probably having trouble with his bike. The girls were asleep and she was waiting for him to come home so she could go along and help at the bakery.

An hour later, which gave him plenty of time to walk home, her husband still hadn’t returned. Had he had an accident? Could he be lying hurt by the track somewhere?

Coming downhill, flying home, bike chain snapping and wrapping his leg, hurling him.

Headlong into a tree.

She felt tears in her chest, but she choked those. If the bike had broken down not too far along the way and he had bamboo to carry he could’ve gone back to Paa’s to borrow the horse. When he arrived there, Paa wouldn’t stop talking. Talk, talk, talk. Chappy too respectful to interrupt. The horse was way out back. The horse was unwilling. Yes, that horse didn’t like Chappy. And Chappy? He was no horseman.

Oriwia put the lamp on the sill and made a cup of tea, which she carried back to the window. Couldn’t ring anyone because Post and Telegraph still hadn’t connected the phone line to the new house. Wouldn’t mind betting that horse had deliberately gone under a low branch and Chappy had been knocked to the ground. Couldn’t leave the girls to go and look. Dulcie would have guessed by now she wasn’t coming to help at the bakery. P&T needed a good shake-up. That evil horse.

Oriwia lay down on her bed and watched shadows that were unmoving, listened for horse hooves clubbing the verge, the clatter and tick of an old bicycle, quick footsteps. What she could hear instead were frog croaks, and faraway ruru calling each other. There were at least four.

She thought of blood.

Perhaps she slept, listening, and thinking of blood.

Then as the flame in the lamp turned pale, her ears caught the pad, pad, pad of hooves. She stumbled from the bed and opened the door to see Paa coming towards her on that swank of an upstart horse. Not that she thought about the horse in those terms at the time, but that’s what she said about it in telling the story. Though the horse didn’t like Chappy, it gave Paa no trouble. It was swell-headed and choosy, despite being just a workhorse like everybody else.

‘Where is he? Where is he?’ she called as she ran out to meet Paa.

‘I came to see if he’s all right,’ Paa said.

‘Years had passed by the time I got to ask Chappy about that day,’ Grandmother Oriwia said. ‘Instead of trying to remember everything now, I’ll write it up tonight and have it ready in the morning.’