crawled between everybody's legs and every now and then, one of the kids would put their hands under the table and put a piece of mutton into her mouth. Nanny had a cat too, and the cat and Emere often had to race for the meat. Emere mostly won. While we were having our tea, Kara and I looked round. Nanny didn't have electricity, just some lamps and candles and the light from the fire. The room was very plain, hardly any furniture except for the table, two long forms, a few extra chairs, a cupboard for crockery, and a small tin food safe. On the wall was a picture of the King, and a big photograph of Nanny's whole family, except for Emere. When we pointed this out to Nanny later, she laughed and said, ‘Emere's there!’ But we still couldn't see her, so Nanny pointed to her puku in the photograph, and we thought she was rude. The room was decorated with pictures from magazines, and streamers from last Christmas were strung across the rafters. In the middle of the roof, a long sticky fly paper hung, spattered over with dead flies. And on the mantelpiece above the fire, was a long piece of newspaper, cut into jaggedy patterns. The house was very warm, but a little smoky, because the wind used to come down the chimney and billow the smoke and ash onto the floor. Outside, we could hear the sea saying swish, swish, swish. It seemed as if Nanny's place was a nest floating in the sea…. After tea, Nanny Caroline told the kids to wash up. We asked if we could help, but she said, ‘What you think I have all