‘Okay,’ she said, picking up her pace again. ‘Okay, good.’

The village was set out on a grassy slope running back from the water, a low dip between the forested ridge of the peninsula and a small rise before the final drop to the sea. Houses were arranged in family groups, with leisurely paths joining them to the dance ground and meeting place. Open platforms faced towards the breeze and people called out as Martha and Angel passed. Fires were being lit, men were stretching, women brushing the paths. Coconut palms swayed above, trees laden with fruit grew behind the houses, hibiscus bloomed, and at the edge of the fjord where the canoes pulled up, children were pushing off for the long paddle to school. Two women were already making their way across the fjord.

‘Those women,’ Martha asked. ‘They go where?’

‘For water,’ Angel said.

‘I thought there was a spring in the village. Rika told me.’

‘In the dry season, it goes. Now we cross the fjord, climb up the other side.’

‘Big work,’ Martha said. There were no tin roofs here, no tanks. This village was as Gauguin might have painted it; for the women crossing the fjord for water, a tin roof and a tank would have made a better paradise.

‘See,’ Angel said. ‘You take me to Moresby. I live with Wilkie and Aaron. It is good.’

‘And Rika,’ Martha said.

‘And Rika,’ Angel echoed with a merry, tinkling laugh that left Martha uneasy. Hard to know. Hard to interpret.

Martha was alert for signs of animosity, looking for anything that might indicate suspicion among the women. She was looking that first morning, and there’d been nothing else to suggest unease. On the contrary, there was much taking of hands and touching of faces. Small children wrapped themselves around Rika’s legs. Young girls took her hand and cooed. Out of the crowd, faces Martha had encountered in photographs became people as Rika named them: Naomi with the mop of black curls and her next baby at her breast, Ruth with serious eyes, and strong Dulcie, mother of Angel and Wilkie, whose shoulders wouldn’t be out of place in a Sydney gym. These were the women married to Aaron’s father’s brothers’ sons. Cousins, tambu sisters to him, the mothers of his nephews, the boys he put through school. At the clearing beside the cookhouse, they made room for Martha beside them, patting the mats where they sat, welcoming and friendly. Rika, in her trade-store dress, was scraping coconut into a bowl. ‘Good walk?’ she asked, the picture of ease.

Martha squatted down on the mat next to Dulcie. Without language, her attempts to take up a task amid the food preparation were reduced to gestures that made the women laugh and hide their faces.

‘No work for you, you’re a visitor,’ Rika explained. ‘They mean you’re untrained.’ She grinned, still scraping her coconut. Some flecks of its white flesh fell on the ground and without warning a woman slapped her. Martha gasped as Rika’s head jerked with the force of it. Angel stood up. Everyone else fell silent.