‘You’re cynical.’

Simeon laughs again. ‘Realistic,’ he says.

‘Anyway,’ Jericho says. ‘What do I know about ecotourism? I can’t live up there running some crackpot guesthouse situation.’

‘You don’t have to. All you have to do is set it up, bankroll it, and then leave them to it.’

‘I haven’t got any money. It’s all I can do to pay my mortgage.’

Simeon laughs again. It’s becoming irritating. ‘That’s white-man talk. You’ve got access to money. They haven’t. I haven’t. That’s the difference.’

‘Who’s going to walk up there?’ Laedi says. ‘Ecotourism won’t work. It rarely does unless there’s an airstrip nearby and a good reef. Tourists like the coast. You’ll have to come up with something else.’

‘Like what?’ Jericho asks. What is it that’s wanted of him? By Laedi, by Young Albert, by Bili? By this ache of a place?

An edge of panic enters the hot, lonely tent of his mosquito net with him. Sleep is a distant prospect. Instead Jericho conducts a conversation in his head with Simeon. A tirade. Didn’t you say that hapkas was good, a state of being to celebrate? When all along a hapkas kid on the mountain is a worthless burden. You said so yourself. Janus-faced. Like Bili. And don’t tell me Melanesian masks are multiple, face upon face, different registers of truth. Don’t talk of the surrealists. I’ve heard it all before.

Hapkas. It’s a state of penance, and that night Jericho does not like it.

SEPTEMBER COMES, AND WITH IT THE CELEBRATION OF INDEPENDENCE. Thirty years since the Australian flag with its Union Jack in the corner was lowered, and the bird of paradise flag raised. Thirty years since the Prince of Wales stood in the mud and saluted. Thirty years since Aaron died.

The town is filling with people travelling in by truck, by canoe, by foot, to join the celebrations. Driving past the stadium with Bili late one afternoon, Jericho can hear the rehearsals: school children drilled into formation, choirs belting it out, the drumbeat of dancers. Bili has unbent, Laedi has insisted, not that it makes it any easier. To add to his misery, Jericho has her determined display of sisterliness to endure.

‘It’s worse,’ he says to Simeon. ‘At least when she’s angry, there’s hope.’

Passing the stadium with its sounds of the pageant being rehearsed, Bili and Jericho are on their way to the university, where there’s an exhibition of photographs from independence at the library. They are meant to be meeting Simeon, but he’s not there. They cross the dry campus, over grass worn down to its stubs, and climb the stairs to his office. His door is locked. The light is off. They walk back through the dust, circle the exhibition, and come to a stop in front of a photograph of Aaron standing in a group of men behind Somare as he signs the papers declaring self-government in 1973.

‘That’s when you came to us,’ Bili says.

‘He looks so young,’ Jericho says.