They’re a different breed in town. Tarawera is surrounded by homes for retirees and weekenders built to accommodate Auckland millionaires. Rotorua is much more working class – tourism operators, loggers, hunters and hospitality workers catering to the constant flow of tourists. The town is big enough to have its own hospital but too small for a professional sports team. Then there are the suburban pockets you know not to venture to, particularly in the evening. The areas described in Once Were Warriors. Roads that belong to the gangs, places even the police avoid.

Cain rasps his hand back over his shorn hair. His hairline is tongue and grove, and if he grew his hair out, you’d see how thin it had become. ‘Always weird coming back here, things seem to change every time we visit.’

‘Like what?’

‘The KFC has closed,’ he says. Then we both laugh. It’s a relief, but once more I remember the dress, the messages, the ring and the flare of joy fades. ‘I don’t know, it’s just the streets. It’s like an old friend; we’ve grown apart and now it’s hard to recognise the place.’

I sense it too. Especially at the lake house. In the summer the lake buzzes with engines. More homes dot the water’s edge. The old floating boatsheds have all been painted. Everything changes. What if we went somewhere else? Truly off grid for a while to let things settle. Where else could we disappear to?

We reach Lucky Egg and grab a table outside, looking over the quiet street. Lucky Egg is quiet for a Saturday. Maybe the weather forecast has scared everyone away. It’s on Eat Street, a strip of restaurants near the lakefront in the heart of the town designed, I suppose, to create a carnival dining atmosphere. On weekends it’s normally packed with tourists and locals out for a nice meal, but the weather’s been threatening a storm all day. The restaurant is in an old fire station with vaulted ceilings. Those high, leaning panels of glass keep the rain from hitting the cobbled street. Instead it spots and collects, ripples the sky above, and runs in rivulets to the gutters.

‘Storm’s coming,’ Cain says.

A couple on the table next to us pop a bottle of sparkling wine; he’s in boat shoes with one too many buttons undone, and the last remnants of his white hair combed forward.

‘Going to be a wet walk back to the hotel,’ the man says to us. ‘At least we’ve got champagne.’ I don’t point out the difference between twelve-dollar sparkling wine and champagne. My mother had the same habit of confusing the two. On the champers tonight. It was always excitable, a gleeful grin, a war cry. She probably never tasted a drop of champagne in her life. Only when I was an adult did I realise how sad that was.