She’d have liked to take Leonard to the airport right then, after lunch, when all had been said, and she’d heard about his life in Oxford, its quiet satisfactions, and knew that he no longer grieved at night. She’d have embraced him in the hot hangar and stayed to watch the plane take off. Maybe then these plaguing memories would have gone with him, back into the silence of the sky. But there was a farewell dinner to get through first. It was on Laedi’s platform, with rain dripping through the roof. Wilkie spent the evening moving buckets around.

Rika would have preferred to be alone. She’d rather have lain on her bed with the door closed and the louvres open, and let her thoughts do as they would while she waited for Aaron. Waiting for Aaron. Had her life come to that? ‘Don’t make me choose,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t make me choose between you and my people.’ How could she make a claim against that? The entire future depended on him. On the work that they did, there in the office at all hours of the night. How could she say: stop, we must go away, relax, become ourselves again, let the spirit of this baby find us. We’re frightening it away. How could she say that his sperm had become tired? No one could say that to a Melanesian man. Or: if you can’t choose me, then choose the child.

These were the thoughts assaulting her as neighbours came up onto the platform to shake Leonard’s hand and colleagues from the anthropology department splashed through the rain from their cars. Rifle came grinding up the hill in his ancient truck, all smiles and boasts, staying for the meal, a fair exchange for another load of the chicken shit soil he sold around the new suburbs. Leonard sat quiet at the end of the table, the smoke from his pipe lingering in the wet air. Alex Penrose was next to him, and between bouts of gossip from the street, they talked of appointments at distant universities. Under the thud of rain on the roof, it was a strangely muffled evening.

Aaron had come back from the regions that morning, and had gone straight to the office. He arrived home late, coming up the steps to the platform while Milton was telling a story he’d heard about a white manager on a plantation near Popondetta, who’d drunk himself to death and been found on the floor the next day. Rika was barely listening, waiting for the moment when Aaron would appear.

Leonard saw her look across and smile as he came up the steps, his face in the shadows, his rucksack over one shoulder. For a moment the tension went out of her and Leonard could see the girl he’d loved, the girl he loved still. When Aaron came into the light, Leonard stood up and put out his hand. The rain had stopped, and with only the drip from the eaves to distract them, the table fell silent. Alex Penrose also stood, making room for Aaron, giving him his seat. And there they were, Leonard and Aaron side by side. The muscles in Rika’s neck were tense again as she passed a plate of food along the table to Aaron. It sat untouched in front of him, the smoke from his cigarettes adding to the heavy air. Leonard, pipe in hand, was asking him about Canberra and self-government. How well prepared were they? What level of support were they getting from Australia’s Labor government? His questions were real, and though he’d heard the views of everyone at the table, he was interested in Aaron’s answers, which were politely given, without elaboration. They were ready for self-government, he said, but not yet for independence.