That was what she needed to channel now, Bonnie thought. She must find that strength – the same determination that had got her through all those hospital appointments and tests with Tui, the bravery that she’d had to show in the face of others’ pity – and utilise it.

‘I need to—’ she began, making to leave the room, but Tracey was already smiling.

‘I know, duck. I know.’

23

Kit barely breaks a sweat as he leads me along the steep and winding trail. He seems to be impervious to both the intense heat of the day and the arduous gradient of Queenstown’s Tiki Trail, but the opposite is unfortunately the case for me. The relief I felt when we moved from the unsheltered pavement into the tree-shaded undergrowth turned out to be short-lived, and before long, I’m plucking the damp material of my T-shirt off my back and dabbing ineffectually at the sweat on my forehead.

The muddy uphill footpath is littered with exposed tree roots and the air is thick with the scent of vegetation. Birds chirp, fallen leaves crunch under our boots, and columns of sunlight filter through the branches of the towering Douglas firs, dappling the ground with white-and-gold speckles. It feels like being inside the vast cave of a treasure-hungry dragon. Kit chats away amicably as we continue to climb, offering a casual hand of assistance whenever the going gets particularly tough and pointing out large throne-like chairs that have been sculpted from the wide stumps of felled beech trees. Further up, we pass a narrow roped-off area that Kit explains is a mountain bike trail and tells me matter-of-factly that he once broke both his collarbones trying to ride down it ‘at full tit’.

It’s difficult to imagine anything causing damage to a man of Kit’s size, and I tell him so.

‘Fragile as a fern frond, me,’ he says with a laugh, plucking a leaf from a nearby bush and shredding it between his fingers.

‘Have you ever had any other injuries?’ I enquire.

Kit frowns, his gaze flickering upwards as he seeks out the small gaps of blue sky visible through the treetops.

‘Smashed up my nose playing rugby at school,’ he says, tapping it. ‘Destroyed a few ribs on a ski trip a few years back, munted my coccyx jumping into a river when I was about fifteen.’

‘Bloody hell, man,’ I retort, resting my hands on my thighs. A couple of around my age are making their way down the hill, and as the two of us stop to let them past, I notice that the man has a prosthetic leg. That, and the fact that, like Kit, he has clearly found the climb no bother at all, makes me feel even worse about my shambolic fitness levels.