‘Thank you, Gee-nie. Oh Gee-nie, darling,’ she calls in her singsong voice, gathering her reins back up. She would find it much easier if someone simply knotted them together.

Kit has mercifully decided to drop the conversation about getting me on to a horse, and is instead talking me through the route we’re following. Koru Stables, he explains, is situated in the gateway to Mount Aspiring National Park and the famous Routeburn Track. The Dart River feeds its way across the area like a silver braid, its glacier-fed waters icy cold even during the summer months. The closest town to us is called Paradise, and it is here that Kit currently lives, although he confesses to spending most nights at Allie’s apartment just outside Queenstown.

‘I rent a room at Bonnie’s,’ he reveals, holding aside a low-hanging branch to make way for Keith and Tui. ‘It’s partly why I’m so close to this one.’

‘Kit is my roomie,’ Tui tells me proudly. ‘He lives in the big room, and I live in the tent.’

‘A tent?’ I query, glancing at Kit.

‘She means in the extension,’ he corrects, grinning up at Tui. ‘For some reason, we have a bit of trouble with that word, don’t we?’

Tui shakes her head. ‘Yes.’

‘Tui’s staying with her dad, Simon, while Bon’s away, and I don’t really like being at the house alone. It feels too big and too quiet.’

‘How big is it?’ I enquire.

‘It’s only a bungalow,’ Kit tells me. ‘Bonnie’s parents left it to her, but she’s made some modifications over the years, added a few rooms here and there, you know.’

Bonnie’s parents, echoes my brain. My grandparents.

‘Did they move away?’ I ask hopefully, dreading the answer.

‘They went to the next place,’ Tui says happily. ‘Where Kit’s daddy went, that’s all.’

Kit doesn’t say anything, but his expression is tinged with sadness. So, he has lost a parent, too, but unlike me, Kit doesn’t seem to wear his sorrow like a second skin.