‘You wanted to know why I came back?’ he prompts, to which I nod, unable now not to beam at him. For once, the staggering landscape has lost its captive audience, because all I want to stare at is Kit.

‘When I got to Wellington, I tried really hard not to think about home,’ he says, chewing at the corner of his thumbnail. ‘Allie had found us a place in a nice part of town, and everyone was really friendly and all that – but it just felt, I dunno, empty somehow, you know? Like there was a space around me that nothing and nobody there could fill.’

I swallow, the hairs on my arms standing up with recognition.

‘Me and Al, we’d been together so long that it had become a habit, and once we took away everything else that we knew – all our friends and family, our jobs – we found out pretty quickly that we didn’t have all that much in common any more. I mean, I love the girl, and she loves me, but neither of us loved each other in the right way, you know.’

My mind flickers to Billy, to how much affection and respect I have for him, and how much I wanted to love him in the other way, but could never quite get there.

‘I am a stubborn old mule,’ Kit goes on, pushing his foot through the dust. ‘Because I’d said I would go to Wellington, I did, even though I knew deep down that it wasn’t what I wanted. So, I gave it a whirl, but it was never going to work.’

‘Is Allie OK?’ I ask.

‘Oh, yeah.’ Kit nods in earnest. ‘Better than OK, in fact. Once we’d had the chat, she told me she felt relieved. We had been arguing so much – even before we left here we’d been doing that. It was sad to be ending something, but we both knew by doing so, we would be opening ourselves up to something even better. She’s happy in Welly. Like, really happy. I would never have left her by herself up there if I didn’t believe that.’

‘I know you wouldn’t have,’ I agree. ‘You’re just too … well, you, to do that.’

‘When I wrote you that note, I didn’t tell you the whole truth,’ Kit says then.

‘Oh?’

‘I told you that I was feeling sketchy about going because I was worried about Tui, but that was only half the reason. Fact is, I didn’t want to leave you either.’

My heart is fluttering so fast now that I am afraid it might carry me right off the top of this hill.