The rain starts before dawn, at first lightly brushing the roof, then getting so loud that it drums out conversation. The temperature has dropped too, so nobody minds when Lissy lights the fire for breakfast. There is plenty of dry firewood stacked on the verandah. I bring wood inside and put it on the hearth while Lissy cooks crumbed fish and fried eggs with tomatoes.

We tell Grandma and Grandpa about the possum but I’m not sure they hear us. They are tired after yesterday’s fishing trip and they walk as though dragging heavy weights. After breakfast, Grandpa goes back to bed for extra sleep, and Grandma brings out her battery radio from the bedroom, tuned to some talk programme. No music, just blah, blah about threatened fish species. We all had fish for breakfast. But saving the planet is always about what other people should be doing, never us. Right? I tell Grandma that and she says, “Shut your cake-hole, boy, I’m listening to the wireless.”

Lissy needs more firewood, so I go out to the verandah to get an armful. I can see the bay through the trees, grey, choppy and blurred by heavy rain. The wind is coming up and swirling rain in over the verandah. No bird-calls this morning, only water noises, rain on the iron roof, rain on the road and underneath that, the roar of a rain-filled stream.

Inside, we hear rain hissing in the chimney, but the fire is bright orange and the oven is hot.

“Want to make some bread?” Lissy asks.

“Not particularly.”

“Go on,” she says. “It’s easy.”

For once she’s right. It is easy, and with Grandpa asleep there is nothing else to do, although I resent the way Lissy makes me scrub my hands twice over before I start, as though I’ve been handling cyanide. Kneading bread reminds me of playing with modelling clay at kindergarten, and the way we’d flick it off our rulers to make it stick on the ceiling. I have no doubt that bread dough would work just as well, but fortunately I have outgrown the desire to try it.

While the dough is rising, Lissy and I have a game of Scrabble. I win, as usual, and she says I cheated, as usual. I tell her I don’t know why anyone with such a limited vocabulary would want to play Scrabble. She gets so annoyed that she takes over the bread-making and won’t allow me to put the loaves in the oven. I appeal to Grandma. I mean, what kind of logic confuses a word game with baking bread? But I think Grandma is on Melissa’s side because of the useless cell phone. She not only allows my sister to finish the bread, she also tells her she can use the bach phone to contact her friend Herewini in Queenstown.

Melissa goes to the phone. The process is easy enough, turn the handle three times and when someone at the telephone exchange answers, you give the number you want. But that is too difficult for my sister. “No one is answering,” she says, “There’s a strange crackling noise.”

“It’s the possum ringing its friend,” I tell her, but she doesn’t laugh so I say, “Here, I’ll do it for you.”

I grind the handle, lift the phone and wait. Actually, she’s right. There is no voice, merely a crackling sound. “Something’s wrong,” I shout at Grandma.

“Storm,” says Grandma. “It’ll be a tree over the line somewhere. Don’t worry. They’ll be in tomorrow to fix it.”

I ask, “How will they know to come in and fix it, if we can’t tell them it’s broken?”

“Don’t ask silly questions!” Grandma says.

I think it is a perfectly reasonable question and it’s her answer that’s silly, but I will not waste time in argument. I look at Melissa, who is close to tears, and I don’t tell her that this is just another example of her persistent bad luck.