Sam grinned and turned her to face him. ‘Fleur, I want you to come out to Australia once a year. I mean it. I miss you. Let’s try to spend some of each year together. I’ll even build you a house with a tree tenant.’

Fleur laughed. ‘How about every other year? You come to see me one year and I’ll come to you and Angie the next.’

‘Done!’ Sam let her go and peered down at the picnic. ‘I sincerely hope you guys have left me something to eat,’ he said to the youths lying on their backs in the flower meadow.

FORTY-FOUR

We decided that the perfect time to bury Saffie would be at dawn when the sun rose on a new day. Often a mist would hang over the water and I would feel as if we were on an island cut off from all other human habitation, until the light filtered through making strange mountain shapes that evaporated in the heat of the day. I wanted the sound of seabirds calling and to hear the kokakos and takahe singing in the trees and scuttling in the undergrowth.

I wanted a tranquil, given morning to lay Saffie at long last to rest, and I got my wish.

We all made our way up the hill in the dark. I had found thick church candles and we shielded them from the wind in tubes of glass and they lit our way from the house to the flower meadow.

I was still weak from losing so much blood, and Sam helped me on one side and Jack on the other. When we reached the top we lit nightlights in the summer house and I looked down into the earth where Saffie would lie, part of our garden and forever near me.

We stood back and waited and soon we heard the low sound of Maori singing and saw the small candlelit procession making its way downhill from the tiny meeting house to the water. The tangihanga was moving our way and the sound of their voices rose eerily in the dark. They were carrying Saffie down the valley to the river. There they would cross the water in small boats to our side and take the path Jack and I had long ago hacked out of wilderness. They would carry her up the steep path to her last safe resting place here.

The summer house was beautiful. More ‘of the earth’ and perfect than I could have imagined. The boys had immersed themselves in the spirit of all that I had hoped, and they had built the tiny house with thought and love, these cousins I hardly knew.

I looked over at Fleur. She stood a little apart from us, small, very still, listening to the singing, watching the candlelit group flickering their way towards us. I could not see the expression on her face but the way she held her body tight into itself I knew her feelings were sharp and impenetrable. She was not crying. There is a pain worse than tears: it is the burden you carry to death. The shock you never lose; the death of your child.