10
It was no secret Ada Hood had left her husband and taken their two boys to live in a rented house on Lincoln Road. The marriage had been happy in the beginning and she had congratulated herself over the good fortune of having found such a sturdy man. Her Tom was English, a soldier in the war, who came out to New Zealand like so many others to try and earn a decent living as a farmer. When their sons, first Derek, and then Kenneth were born, he was extremely proud of his little family. But the block of land he’d poured his money into at Te Wharau was situated on poor rocky soil, creating so many agricultural frustrations that even his little family soon became an undeserving target for blame. Tom’s drinking had crept up on her slowly and with subtle menace. An insult here, a slap there,
