We got snow. In the July holidays the weather turned bitter and the snow powered down.

Matt stood at the window. ‘We need a snowman. Can’t waste the white stuff.’

‘I’ll summon the workforce.’ I reached for my phone.

Snowman planning meeting at ours, 11am sharp! Bring your best techniques and ideas!!

Five minutes before the hour our lounge was busting at its cracked seams with snowman-construction experts. Millie, Jess, most of the kids from our liquefaction brigade. Henry and Leo bouncing out of their skins. Joanne was there with her brother. Feral Clancy lay flat on the floor.

We took several hours to build that sucker – it must have been the hugest snowman in the city. A combination of big and little boys had even managed to set another small one up on top of the portaloo.

Anyway, while we were playing in the snow there were officials all over the country scratching their heads and worrying about how to host the seventh Rugby World Cup when one of the key venues had gone and made itself unusable.

As the snow melted Matt talked about rugby non-stop. Fine by me. It helped keep the deaths out of my head. A hundred and eighty-five. That’s how many people had died in the February quake. Bring on the rugby.

Matt planned his campaign. He intended to watch every All Blacks’ game from the fanzone in Hagley Park where, he told me several times, there would be huge screens and lots of atmosphere just like at a real game. ‘You can tag along too, if you like,’ he said.

‘Sure.’ For some of them, anyway. The Aussie–NZ games – I intended to be where I could watch and cheer and bite my nails. I wanted to go to the New Zealand versus Tonga opening game too.

I couldn’t wait. The idea of being part of a crowd that had nothing to do with earthquakes – brilliant. The Tonga game kicked off at eight-thirty in the evening, so I had plenty of time to get home from school and to the park fanzone before kick-off.

Matt’s rugby fever infected our whole neighbourhood. Imelda Chan bossed her family into coming. You couldn’t have stopped Leo and Henry with a force five-point-five quake. Myra and Dave, Blake, Mum and Dad, Matt’s dad, Millie, Jess, Joanne and their families, Feral Clancy – all of us made plans. How to get there and what to take.

Something to look forward to – great. But then Matt’s school reopened on its own site in September and his day went back to normal and just like that, my life felt a lot harder. And that set off the guilts. So many others were struggling with real problems – injuries, deaths of loved ones, homelessness. All I had to do was go to school at a weird time. Get a grip, Lyla Sherwin.

It didn’t make a blind bit of difference to how I felt. Swearing helped, but not for more than a few seconds. I simply hadn’t understood the solidarity I’d got from him having to deal with the same school upset as I did. Who’d have thought? Matt Nagel, support buddy? But being sarcastic didn’t help either.

So I went to watch the rugby. I cheered and groaned and lost myself in the excitement of each game. It was good. I felt resilient.

The All Blacks got into the quarter-finals, then the semis and then the final. We’d play France in Auckland at Eden Park at the end of the October holidays.

The day arrived. We hit the fanzone. Henry kept leaping around, questions pouring out. ‘Will we win, Matt? We will, won’t we? The score’s gunna be us 72 and France nil.’

Leo looked nervous. Imelda worked on looking cool – not easy when your face is painted solid black with a silver fern across the chin.

The All Blacks won 8–7 but I reckon I wasn’t the only one whose heart nearly stopped a thousand times over during those eighty minutes. Tense! There needs to be a force nine word for the tension we all felt. And the roar when the final whistle went was a force ten.

We walked home on a high.

The win and the whole atmospheric excitement made going back to school at the wrong time of the day okay. Life went on. Fun still happened, and we had the opening of the start-up mall to look forward to at the end of October – shops in shipping containers. It felt like the central city was beginning to come alive again.

But in the days between the rugby ending and the start-up mall opening, Mr Nagel found a place to rent and Matt moved out. ‘See ya round, Lyla S.’

I lifted a hand in farewell. He high-fived me. I couldn’t believe how much I didn’t want him to go. Who could I talk to now? Of course Matt didn’t do talk, but he’d been there through the worst of it. In his own weird way he’d been kind. If he did get to be an All Black, I’d go and watch him play.

Having him around had helped. Like, I could tell he was freaked out too when an aftershock happened. Meals, dishes, washing, kid-minding – he’d helped with all of it. Matt Before Quake was horrible. Matt Post Quake was okay. And now he wasn’t here, and it sucked.