England, in sharp contrast, felt like a minefield. Tracey lived in Kent, which Bonnie knew was many miles away from both Cambridgeshire, where Evangeline lived with her adoptive parents, and London, where everything had happened – but she still didn’t feel safe. Coming back here had made the intervening years fall away, and Bonnie felt increasingly as if she was reverting back into her eighteen-year-old self – that lost, scared and homesick girl who was so desperate to please and fit in.

‘Tracey,’ she said, as her old friend free-poured an alarming quantity of rum into a pan containing mulled wine, ‘what else do you remember about me from those days?’

‘Well …’ Tracey considered this for a moment. She had pulled out all the festive stops for her party, dressing in floor-length purple sequins and sweeping her streaked blonde hair up into a chignon. She had joked to Bonnie earlier that she resembled a Christmas bauble, but Bonnie preferred to think of her as an eccentric fairy. Tracey had certainly granted her a good few wishes over the years they had known each other.

‘You were determined,’ Tracey decided, bending forwards to sniff the pan appreciatively. ‘You used to do this adorable thing where you jutted out your chin and clenched your teeth together, as if to say, “I want that and I will damn well have it.” And you were capable, too, much more so than I think you realised. Aside from the times when the café was overrun with workmen, nothing seemed to daunt you. Well, nothing until …’ She paused in her stirring.

‘The baby,’ Bonnie said quietly, and at this, Tracey nodded sympathetically.

‘Yes, love – the baby.’

And it was true. The pregnancy had hit Bonnie hard and sent her cowering into a corner, terrified to face what was happening, yet scared to undo what had been done. When she left little Evangeline behind and went home to New Zealand, it wasn’t simply her swollen, leaking breasts and topsy-turvy hormones that rendered her miserable; it was what she had lost – not just her daughter, but herself. That girl, who Tracey remembered as being such a go-getter, had remained on the tarmac of Heathrow Airport, while the embattled new version flew to the other side of the world, forever changed.

It was only when Tui was born thirteen years later that Bonnie began to regain her lost strength – and when it became clear that her new baby daughter was not like all the other children, and that she was going to face more challenges than most, Bonnie had no choice but to step up and woman up. Tui needed her mum right there next to her, ready and willing to fight any of the battles that she could not, and as the years passed, Bonnie’s gutsiness had begun to re-emerge.