Kit looks away first, using the excuse of refilling our tumblers to break eye contact. I can hear the muted chirp of crickets coming from the garden below us, while high above the balcony, stars lie like ribbons of tinsel across an indigo sky. The air is still now, this afternoon’s breeze hushed by the night, and I can hear the distant swoosh of the waves as they buffet the rocks, displacing pebbles and carrying debris back to shore. If only a force as great as an ocean could scoop up the debris of my life and put it back where it’s supposed to be.

‘I’ll have to buy Griff some dye for his hair,’ Kit says into the silence. ‘But there isn’t much even I can do about his face.’

‘It took you all that time to come up with that?’ I exclaim, and Kit laughs.

The whisky continues to go down as we talk, trading stories about our childhoods and coming back time and time again to Tui. The more time I spend with Kit, the more carefree I feel with him, although I know the alcohol probably has something to do with it, too. He is just so easy to talk to, and before long, I find myself opening up in ways I haven’t for a very long time. Without giving away the truth about my adoption or my connection to Evangeline in Tui’s favourite books, I do confess that I struggled with my own identity, and that I went from being loud and outgoing to more of a mousy introvert as I grew up.

Kit puts his head on one side.

‘I knew there was a lively spirit lurking under your surface,’ he remarks. ‘I see flashes of it from time to time.’

‘Alcohol clearly unleashes it,’ I joke, holding up my glass.

‘I figured it was losing your mum that made you retreat into yourself,’ he adds, and I slump back into the beanbag as if I’ve been punctured.

‘It did,’ I admit, my voice low. ‘But I can’t blame that entirely. Truth is, I used to be a person who liked being looked at and noticed, but now … Now I’m the opposite.’

‘I notice you.’

It’s too dark now for me to read Kit’s expression, but I am aware of the tremble I felt earlier at the penguin colony returning. He is sitting so close to me; it would be so easy to lean forwards and kiss him.

‘I noticed you today,’ he says. ‘I saw how brave you were being.’

‘I’m not brave,’ I counter automatically, but he hushes me with a look.