‘Will you stay for dinner?’ Mum asked Whina and Ahorangi, just like any polite posh lady. ‘I’m sorry I can’t spread the best table-cloth.’ Everyone laughed. It had been a day of jokes as well as terror.

Ahorangi took my mother’s hand again. ‘No, thank you. Rawiri and his mother will start worrying about us.’ She turned to Dad. ‘Rawiri rides to town tomorrow, if he can. He will send telegrams to tell people we are safe. Do you—’

My father nodded. ‘Yes, please. Could he send one to Jess up in Auckland? Tell her we’re safe, too.’

Nana Aggie chuckled. ‘Perhaps the earthquake was Jess getting angry with some politicians? That daughter of mine can usually make the ground shake.’

Another voice called from the front gate — the front gap. ‘Hello? Anybody home?’ Whina and I glanced at each other. She started brushing the dust from her dress, and I started trying to tidy my hair. I saw Mum and Ahorangi smiling at us.

Robert McDougall came around the wrecked side of the house. He stared at it, then at us. He held a big brown paper bag. ‘Dad said to come and see if you’re all right. We’re fine — except he stabbed his finger with the nib of his pen when the quake came.’ Robert gave a shaky laugh. ‘And our kitchen caught fire, but we put it out.’ I remembered that black smoke as I stumbled across the bridge.

He looked taller. It sounds silly, because I saw him just about every day at school. But he looked more … more like a man, somehow.

Dad was shaking his hand, just like he’d shaken Whina’s. ‘Glad you’re safe. Tell your mother and father I’ll come to see them tomorrow. We all need to stick together just now.’

Robert held out the paper bag. ‘Mum said to bring these. They all fell off in the quake.’ He saw our puzzled faces, and explained. ‘Plums.’

Plums. I thought of the orchard, the vanished sugar-bag. I began to laugh, and knew I was nearly crying. Mum put her arms around me. Robert stared.

‘See?’ Little Angus was exclaiming meanwhile. ‘Told you it takes a boy to manage some things!’ Robert stared at him, too. He must be thinking the quake had driven us all nuts.

The ground was still. The sun had slid lower. The afternoon was warm and quiet. I could hear magpies warbling somewhere. Probably telling their cousins how they’d started the earthquake to scare us humans away.

Happiness brimmed up in me. Yes, happiness. The house didn’t matter; we’d fix it or build another. I’d lived through the scariest thing I could imagine, and I was fine. So were the people I loved, and that was such a … a treasure.

Robert McDougall gave me a smile, then glanced away. Gosh, I hope — I hope it’s not my best friend that he likes!

ALAN 1957