When we first came here, Aggie would try to find her way around this strange new place, inching along, hands held out, stumbling over logs and river stones, but always picking herself up and trying again. The Maori women would touch her face gently, stroke her sightless eyes. Some of them would go into the bush, bring back leaves that they mashed up and held against her eyelids.

It was Hahona who helped most. She became Aggie’s great friend, just as Haare is mine. The two small girls, as they were then, playing with Aggie’s doll or long strips of flax, making webs and lines with their flashing fingers, chanting in English and Maori. Aggie speaks the Maori tongue well. I am moderate only; Haare’s English is far better than my efforts in his language.

Around her neck, Hahona wears a piece of glowing green jade. It is a fine thing, carved like a tiny flying bat with wings outspread. Her auntie (I think she means that) gave it to her before her people moved to live beside the river, just as Auntie Flora gave Aggie her bracelet. Many times I have seen my sister holding the little greenstone carving, feeling its shape with her fingers, while Hahona tries the silver bracelet on her own wrist.

Yet bracelet and bat have caused anger. Not long after they became friends, before our house was even built, Hahona led Aggie back to our hut one night, pressed her forehead gently against my sister’s, then left. As we sat down to our smoked eel and kumara — Aggie had to be guided into her chair in those days — Mother exclaimed ‘Aggie, love! Your bracelet — where is it?’

My sister smiled. ‘Hahona is wearing it tonight.’ She touched her throat, and I saw the little green bat hanging there, its polished stone glinting in the firelight. ‘She has given me her pekapeka until tomorrow, to show we are friends.’ My mother said nothing.

Before we were halfway through our meal, we heard an angry voice calling from outside, growing nearer and louder. Hahona’s mother, Areta, barged through the doorway of our hut, pulling a weeping Hahona and Ngaio behind her.

Areta is only small, but that night she seemed to fill the room. Her eyes flashed; the blue tattoo marks on her chin and lips gleamed. A torrent of Maori words burst from her.

Father was splendid. He didn’t understand what Areta was shouting — none of us did. But he stood, nodded quietly to the angry visitor, pulled out a chair, and beckoned to her. Areta went silent, strode forward like — like a warrior — and sat. Ngaio had scuttled across the room to crouch beside Janet, and the two young girls watched with staring eyes.