Her response the next day may well have finished for good my writing career for younger readers. There are some comments we always remember, and I sure remember this one: ‘Bill, I think you should stick to writing for adults.’ I am sure she would have smiled as she said it.

I know that Christine smiled the next day when I told her. ‘Mother doesn’t know everything about children’s literature,’ she said. I didn’t believe her.

Inadvertently and tragically it was my brother, Hugh, who really got me into writing for kids. In 1978, Hugh and his wife, Alyson, took leave from their teaching jobs at the old Hutt Valley Memorial Technical College in Petone. Recently married, they were taking a year or so off to travel overseas. They didn’t get far. They made it to Burma and boarded a flight from Rangoon to Mandalay to have a look at the temples. Just after take-off, the plane exploded. All on board were killed: a posse of high-ranking Burmese Army officers and half a dozen overseas tourists.

Among the hundreds of letters of condolence we received at the time is one from a young Indian man. The next stop on their trip had been India and a stay with the family of an Indian woman with whom they had taught in Petone. He had waited for five days and five nights on some train station in an out-of-the-way place, meeting every train, waiting for them.

It was a truly dreadful time for both families. Thirty years on, I still tune out from the news of any air disaster.

Hugh had been the nearest thing to a golden child in our family. Six years my junior (he was the end-of-the-war child), I loved him dearly. The only irate words he ever addressed to me were when he was twelve and I was eighteen. ‘I’ll knock you bloody flat if you ever make me clean your shoes again.’ Given he was already taller and bigger than me, I took the hint. We had shared a bedroom for years. (To be honest, the two of us shared our room with a large accumulation of car parts and enough tools to stock a good-sized garage.) He was your all-round individual. Captain of this and that at school, head boy and dux at good old Petone Tech, he had taken off, done a reasonable science degree, and then returned to Petone Tech to teach there for what was to be the whole of his career. He had played and then coached basketball. He also played the clarinet—dreadfully; and the guitar—‘diligent’ is a kindly way of describing his efforts. He sang, too, but gave no evidence of having inherited very much of Rosa Dorothea’s abilities. Still, one can’t excel at everything.

An ugly ending to two good lives, and a snuffing-out of promise of anything that might have been. The situation at the actual time could hardly have been uglier. Little news made it out of Burma, even then, and both families were told that they would not be permitted entry to the country. Their remains were cremated following a funeral service at the Anglican cathedral in Rangoon, and a couple of months later their ashes were repatriated. An enormous memorial service had been held in Petone in the week following their deaths, and their families finally farewelled them, privately, when what was left of them eventually came home.

My father was devastated and distraught. He probably never got over this loss in the ten or so years left to him. I did all the grubby work for him, and did what I could to hold our family together. Dear old Hugh had written his own will, so enough to say that it took some figuring out and legal manoeuvring.

Six months or so of all of this was not too good for me or my boys, and I realized I had to do something about it.