‘Shit,’ I say to a passing butterfly, only to giggle manically as the word vibrates harshly in the silent air. I feel like I’m cracking up at the moment – all this crying one minute then laughing the next.

Taking a deep, anxiety-quashing breath, I hitch up my dress, clamber over the gate, and start along the stony pathway beyond, not looking at the horses on either side of me. The powerful heat seems to intensify as I walk, pressing against my shoulders like a pair of insistent hands that I can’t shrug off, and I can feel sweat beginning to bead on my upper lip.

It is beautiful here in this wilderness, but I can’t seem to process the shapes and colours properly. My mind is narrowed in its focus, blinkered to all but the task ahead, and so I find it easier to simply stare down at my moving feet than at the landscape around me.

I push my way under a thicket of trees at the far end of the driveway, and once through, spot what looks like a small yard of sorts up ahead. There are twelve or so stables arranged in a horseshoe shape around a large paved area, and I count six horses tethered to a wooden rail, each one tacked up ready to be ridden. In a small paddock to the right of the yard, a woman of around my age is schooling a lively-looking bay, its black tail swishing away the flies on its bronze flanks as it circles, snorting with irritation, through the dust.

The group I saw climbing into the minibus back in Queenstown are all here, too, lined up not far from a mounting block, each of them clad in matching borrowed hats and boots. There is no sign of the teenage girl with the little dog or the dark-haired man who was driving the van, but as I make my tentative way across the dry, dusty earth towards the rest of the tourists, he strolls out from what looks to be an office, clocks me lingering, and promptly heads in my direction.

‘You all right there?’ he calls, his clipped but strong Kiwi accent immediately apparent. Now that he’s drawing closer to me, I can see a complicated pattern of tattoos decorating his arms. He has an open, friendly face, with paler eyes than I was expecting topped by thick, black brows, a chiselled chin, wide nose and healthy spread of dark stubble. The white short-sleeved shirt he’s wearing is branded with the same lettering and Koru Stables logo as the minibus, and his red shorts are streaked with dirt.

He’s about to draw level with me, and I have yet to answer his question.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Do you speak English?’

He’s right in front of me now. His eyes are the faintest green.

‘Yes,’ I manage. ‘Sorry, I just. I was just …’