‘Martha,’ she says, her eyes alight. ‘You’re here.’ A long hug lifts Martha off her feet.

‘It’s so good to see you,’ Martha says, and they’re hugging, and the spots of rain are getting bigger, and happiness is welling in Martha, when Jericho rounds the bend. Milton’s right – something’s changed in him. She can’t tell what, except that the city-smooth edges have gone. His boots are worn, the colour of earth, and he smells of wood smoke and fish. He has Milton by the arm, coming up the hill, and when he stops to greet Martha – another hug, another kiss – Milton puts his hand on her shoulder and says, ‘Old friend, these tupela have come for us,’ and they walk on like that, at ease again.

At the top of the hill, on the open space above the airstrip, the councillor, who’s been waiting for news of Bili’s arrival, shakes her hand as he makes his welcome speech. People are gathering round as he recalls the last time she was here, in the fjords, when pirate fishing ships were dropping their nets off the reefs that are as much a part of their heritage as the forests that have vanished under the rain. Since the boats have been back in Collingwood Bay, the councillor has many questions for Bili. His wife has a pineapple for her, and his children have come from the school to shake her hand.

‘Do you want to go inside?’ Milton asks Martha, and she can see that it’s he who wants to go in, but can’t abandon her to the wet. All either of them have is a banana leaf to hold against the rain. ‘You go,’ she says, but he shakes his head and they go in together, and by the time they’ve met the German television producer, the sound- and cameramen, the rain has stopped as suddenly as it started. Sun glints on the puddles, steam rises from the grass, and bright rays of sun return the fjords to their massy green.

Jericho is the next to come into the resort. He puts down his pack, drinks a bottle of water, looks around at the bar, the wide veranda and wicker chairs. ‘Straight from Somerset Maugham,’ he says, and Martha can’t tell if it’s disapproval she sees cross his face, or relief. He takes off his boots, and is talking of a shower – the Germans have already gone for theirs – when a young man with dreadlocked plaits appears.

‘This is Archie,’ Jericho says. ‘From Conservation Melanesia. He came up on the dinghy with us.’ Archie has been in Collingwood Bay because of the pirate ships the councillor is talking to Bili about. They were fishing off the reefs in the bay. It was a provocation, Archie reckoned, because one of the men who was a principal in the company that had wanted to log along that coast and then plant oil palm also has an interest in the ships – which are registered in another country and shouldn’t be in these waters at all.