It was advice he could give Bili, but couldn’t use for himself. He frowned and moaned until eventually, on the platform in Hohola, he admitted that the anger he pounded on to the page was turning back on him. Useless. It was all useless. He was a no-good writer. The novel was a no-good white-man form. Who, here, cared about white girls? And those fuckers down in Melbourne would read it like the perves they were. ‘All it’ll do is prove what they think - that we can’t keep our eyes off their girls.’

‘Might make you some money,’ Rika said, and Milton scowled. He drank a pot of strong black coffee and sloped off down the street like a vagabond.

Back at the shack, Tessa went into the fire.

It was quiet out at the river, half an hour from town, on a track that wound up over a small ridge and down the other side into a shallow valley. The shack was near a bend where the river pooled out before continuing on in a channel between the rocks. Laedi took the girls there at the weekends. Laedi didn’t swim in the pool of tea-stained water, with its grainy beach. She lay on the rocks and read. Milton sat beside her with his ukulele, watching the girls. He and Laedi didn’t speak much; there was a quiet between them, as if they were part of the quietness that fell over the dry hills and the sandy soil. At that time of year, after the winds and before the rain, it was hot and still. The air smelled dusty, the trees rustled their papery leaves, cicadas kept up their shrill, and at dusk snakes slid into the water. Milton saw them when he set up Rifle’s water-catching system.

Rika and Aaron came most weekends too. It was dusk when they’d arrive. Rika was right - Aaron’s hours had increased with the move to Somare’s office. Up early, home late. And still he’d want to go out to the river on a Saturday night. He’d swim across and dive with the current. He’d wash the dust of Hohola from his nose, smell the hills and the wood smoke from Milton’s fire. He’d pick up the ukulele, feel young again.

Milton was out there, tending his vegetables and contemplating his characters – he hadn’t found a replacement for Tessa, at least not one that took – when the leader of the Opposition, a staunch man in his forties, dropped dead on the floor of the House of Assembly. The first Milton knew of it was the next day, when Rifle’s truck loomed over the ridge and down the track. He was shaking his head with the drama of it, and in among his rambling account of the wailing around the town, and the talk of magic at the market, he said that even waitpela friends had gone crazy with the disaster. Rika, who everyone thought had calmed down, was shouting and crying, saying next it would be Aaron. Just the same. One day he’d ‘dai pinis’ there on the floor. Rifle shook his head and told Milton it was so maybe. Hadn’t Simbaikan said Aaron wouldn’t live long. ‘Was she right?’ Milton asked. ‘Maybe. Strong spirit, that woman, she knows plenty.’ So Milton came into town on the truck, prowled around testing the air for character and plot, and turned up at the platform in time for pumpkin curry and rice. And an egg just for him, from Bili.