‘How do you know that?’ Martha doubts that it’s true. Jericho’s no expert on reefs.

‘Archie told me,’ he says, and they swim on, until the cliff begins its slope towards the fingertip point where the grass of the airstrip meets the water.

Above them, trees grow out over the fjord, vines loop from their branches in a rich fringe, a kind of celestial conservatory; among the ferns and mosses that cover the rock face are clusters of tiny orchids. Being there with Jericho, languid in the water, is, for Martha, an unexpected moment of grace. Buoyed by the salty water, protected by Jericho’s presence and the soft sounds of birds in the trees – wee-ip, wee-ip – her pulse doesn’t change its beat when a large mackerel cruises the line of the reef below them. Mar-ve-llous. That’s how Rika used to say it, and it is. Marvellous. A marvel.

On their way back towards the wharf, Jericho comes to the surface with a clamshell.

‘I’ve always wanted to do that,’ he says, shaking water from his hair and grinning. He looks at the shell proudly, small though it is, then kicks his way back down to deposit it on a convenient ledge. Watching him, grief surges through Martha. A pure, sad grief loosened from anger. Yes, she thinks, it’s this silky water that is our madeleine, this and the pattern of light passing through it, tiny bubbles from a diving body.

‘In the dinghy yesterday,’ Jericho says when they return to the wharf and sit like sea creatures that have come out to warm themselves in the late rays of the sun, ‘I was thinking about Michael Rockefeller drowning over in West Papua when he was collecting those Asmat poles, back in the sixties, and his sister in the helicopter looking for him. I was imagining what would have been in his mind as he tried to make it to shore. How easy it’d be for a canoe to be swept out to sea. He had a small motor but it was drenched when they capsized in a rip from the Eilanden river. In our dinghy, even without a river mouth, I could see from the currents that it’d be a hard swim.’

‘Did you think you’d capsize?’

‘No, not in a dinghy. Though now you come to mention it, I did check out the life jackets.’

‘Were there any?’

‘Two ancient yellow things that wouldn’t have passed an inspection.’

‘Jericho!’ she says. ‘Please be careful.’

‘We weren’t in danger.’

‘No one thinks they are. If they did there wouldn’t be any drownings. Danger doesn’t declare itself.’

‘Like Aaron.’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Exactly.’

He looks her straight in the eye. ‘What happened?’ he asks.

THE MASSY GREEN

‘IT WAS A CLEAR DAY, LIKE THIS,’ MARTHA BEGINS. SHE can feel Jericho’s eyes on her. Across the fjord there’s a wisp of smoke rising through the trees from a village; in the distance, the mountains are clear against the sky. The day she must return to was clear like this, a benign day. From the shore the sea was calm and glittery, with soft clouds billowing on the horizon.