Now he cleared his throat and glanced in the back of the car to make sure his parents were sleeping.

‘Fleur, I think you should tell Mum and Dad about David.’

‘No, Sam, they’ve enough to think about. They’re just too old to take any more.’

Sam looked at her. He just stopped himself saying, Fleur, what if it becomes public? You’ll have to tell them then.

He had guessed correctly that Fleur hoped the whole thing would go away if she did not think about it.

For heaven’s sake, let her bury her child before she thinks about anything else.

He thought about Angie back at the house and the sons and grandsons he adored, pitching in to build this odd summer house for Nikki before she came home. He thought of Jack caught bang in the middle of this tragedy and of the child he and Nikki had nearly lost.

This far-flung family were gathering to mourn for a lost child that was only a whispered legend to his grandchildren. And because Sam was an optimist, he saw in this instinctive gathering of the clan a new opportunity for closeness. For honesty and for a gentle moving on to the next generation, when his children and grandchildren might become closer to Nikki and Jack’s children.

It was as if the catastrophe that had befallen Fleur had scattered them all, yet it did not matter how far away you lived from each other, in the end blood counted.

Sam had spent half his life in a vast, often inhospitable and uninhabited country, flying to anyone who needed him. He had learnt to listen to the voices of those living close to the land. Jack had explained about tangihanga, the Maori process of mourning. A tangihanga was not just about grieving, but about saying goodbye and talking openly about the dead person. It was also a support system for the whanau pani – the bereaved family. A time where family ties were strengthened and lost relations welcomed.

Sam had smiled as he listened. It sounded far more sensible than therapy with strangers. It seemed to him that there might be a mysterious pattern to life. Saffie would be buried far from an Anglo-Saxon graveyard, in a place of sun and water. There would be no sad grave to keep, just the growth each year of new life springing from the earth of the meadow.

We named the baby Alice. She weighed nearly 5 lbs now and had a shock of black hair which the nurses said she would probably lose. She was a little fighter and she had no intention of losing her grip on this world.

I could hardly bear to leave her to fly home, but I had to. Laura and Peter had travelled so far. Angie, Sam, their children and grandchildren had lives they must get back to. And Jack’s family were slowly gathering from across New Zealand.

All the bachs on our land, usually kept for visitors, were full. Jack had spent the last three weeks travelling back and forth from Kerikeri to Auckland while Sam held things together at home.