‘That happens, you know,’ Martha says, turning to look at Jericho. ‘Knees give and legs collapse. I never knew it till then, but it’s true, they do.’

Her eyes are bright with tears, though nothing spills over. Listening to her voice, the grit of emotion in it, Jericho is barely breathing. Everything inside him is intent and still.

‘When the body came ashore,’ Martha continues, ‘and was laid on the grass, she went to it like the widows you see in old photos, on hands and knees. Leaning over Aaron as he lay there on the grass, grey, sodden, dead. Then the sound came.’

Martha doesn’t have words for the terrible sound of a woman who registers the cold and the stiffening of the body that once curved around her in love. Nanda kómbo, my lover, my body-self, husband-love. Or for the voices all around, rising in lament: ai, ai. Mother of the ground!

‘You were crying,’ she says, taking Jericho’s hand into hers, ‘and Bili was screaming, and all around the women were pleading, Do not leave us. Oh beloved! Do not leave us. I pulled you and Bili towards me, and you strained away towards each other, and it was Bili who covered your face. For months, years, still even now sometimes, I dream of that moment. Bili with her hands over your eyes, and her mouth wide and open, taking in every detail. That’s what I remember. That I didn’t cover her eyes. And leaning back, or forward, I’m not sure, until the world was spinning and everything went black and red and I too was on the ground with the crying and the wailing.’

She doesn’t tell Jericho that with that swooning sensation came the thought: it’s over. More than a thought, a conviction, raw knowledge. Something was over. Everything, all of it, over.

But right then, in the village, the drama of Aaron’s death was just beginning. Aita was calling into his ear, ‘Come back, sister’s boy! Come back!’ The women had brought a mat for the body. The men lifted it gently, feet towards the ocean, and carried it to Noah’s house for the women to wash and wrap. The cousin-sisters climbed the steps behind, his uncle’s children and children’s wives. ‘You leave us poor and alone! Come back!’ Rika stumbled after them, following the body to the house. Noah stood at the bottom of the steps and would not let her pass. Aita stood at the top. ‘Ai, ai,’ she called. ‘Káe. Evil day. This is the work of káe! Sorcery!’

‘That’s when Rika screamed, a bellowing, raging scream. As the widow she should have taken her place at the dead man’s head, first amongst the mourners. She screamed. Dulcie hit her, other women too, with rolled mats and bark-cloth, and though it was mourning custom, and though they called out to her to be strong, though they called aya to her, the aya she could never be, she hit back at them. She hissed and lashed and kicked. Naomi managed to get her in a grapple, a kind of weird embrace, then she and I pulled her, dragged her, back to where we’d been, across the green, under the tree.’