Another person surprised me by responding ‘silage’. He had a faraway look in his eyes and when I asked him what made him think of silage he looked embarrassed and said, ‘All right, rye grass. Rye grass growing on the Hakataramea hills.’

‘Is that where you grew up? On a farm?’

‘During the late forties. Best days of my life.’

‘What about the wool shed?’ I asked. ‘I love that smell, greasy wool and a bit of sheep poo.’

He gave me a funny look but nodded in agreement, then said, ‘Clover.’

I tried a different way of posing the question: ‘If you were going to describe the smell of New Zealand to someone who hadn’t been here, what would you say?’

Almost everyone said ‘the bush’ and ‘the beach’, although a tourist from New York said, ‘fresh air’. I kept asking different people, and quite often men would offer aromas associated with food: roast lamb, fish’n’chips or hāngī or even hokey pokey ice cream and pavlova. If I asked them to name a plant or flower they tended to look uncomfortable, shake their head and say, ‘I don’t know. The bush?’

‘Saturday,’ said another, ‘when I mow the lawn. Love it.’

There were exceptions, people who were keen to consider the question. ‘It’s impossible to narrow the scent of New Zealand down to one thing,’ said a woman of my own age. ‘It’s going to be different depending on who you are, where you live.’

‘But if you had to,’ I said.

‘Cabbage trees. The smell of cabbage trees in flower. They’re like jasmine or lily, sweet. But lots of natives have beautiful scents. You just have to know what to look for. Have you ever smelt the native Easter orchid? It’s fabulous, so strong.’

‘Are you a botanist?’

‘No. I have a big garden, though. Are you a botanist?’

‘No. I don’t even have a garden but I’m trying to train my nose to be more receptive to the smells of my surroundings. I think we don’t spend enough time thinking about smell. Or smelling things.’

Several nights ago I was sitting at my table, staring into space, when my phone rang. It was Jerome, calling with news. ‘Three things,’ he began before immediately launching into how he’d been successful in the latest round of Marsden funding. He talked on and on, so gripped with the details of his $900,000 award and new research project that he almost forgot to mention the other two pieces of information: that the cause of Archer’s death was confirmed, he’d had an aneurysm while driving, and that Desna was pregnant with twins.

‘How did Renate take it?’ I interrupted.

‘Oh, she’s really pleased for me. She says it’s about time literature got funded.’

I waited a moment. ‘Sorry, I meant about Archer.’