‘I think there’s actually a huge amount of beauty in decay,’ he says. ‘I take comfort from it, I guess. Because as sure as you know these plants here –’ he aims a foot at a nearby husk – ‘will eventually die, you know another seedling is sprouting under the ground. Everything has its time; its own moment to be and to exist.’

‘Some things don’t get enough time,’ I mutter, feeling myself flush.

Kit waits for a moment before replying. I don’t dare look at him.

‘Who did you lose?’ he asks, so quietly that at first I am not sure if I heard him right.

I can’t tell him the truth – not yet. And not in front of Tui.

Aware of my discomfort, Kit allows the lead rein to go slack and moves towards me. For a fleeting moment, I think he might put his arm around me, but instead he raises a hand to rub across the stubble on his jaw.

‘How long ago?’ he asks, but all I can do is shake my head.

‘Ah, shit,’ he mutters. ‘Recently, then? I’m sorry. I lost my dad when I was eighteen. Sent me off the rails there for a while, but I pulled it back.’

I wish I could respond, but my desperate need not to cry in front of him and Tui has rendered me mute. No matter how kind Kit is, or how much he might well understand, my grief is private. I don’t want to share it with anyone yet.

‘Time is the only thing that really helps,’ he goes on. ‘I know that sounds like a bloody obvious thing to say, but it’s a fact that every single day that you get through is another day towards feeling less crook. In the beginning, all I did was rage and shout and drive my poor mum near crazy, but after some time had passed, that all receded, and I was left with a quieter kind of sadness, I guess. It’s not that I don’t feel sad any more, or don’t miss my dad every day, I’ve just learned how to carry it with me.’

I am still unable to do much more than nod and make sympathetic expressions. Thank goodness Tui has been distracted by a butterfly landing on Keith’s neck.

‘You should talk to Bonnie about it when she gets back,’ Kit adds then, and immediately I feel my chest constrict. ‘Her folks passed on not long after Tui was born, so she knows what it feels like to lose someone. Plus, she’s a great listener and—’

‘Didn’t you say we had to be back within the hour?’ I interrupt, and Kit looks at his watch.

‘I did – shit. We had better rattle our dags or Allie will string me up like cured meat.’