It was after a class on Naipaul that Milton caught up with her to ask if she’d ask Rika to bring her camera to a rehearsal. Martha saw that he was nervous – of looking foolish, she supposed, if Rika said no. She liked his nervousness. It made hers less onerous, and something about his shyness made him less flesh, more person, more like her. Her step lightened. ‘Okay,’ she said, and he grinned, doing a little jig as they walked, admitting that it was Jacob who’d had the idea.

‘So you reckon she will?’

‘Yeah. I’m sure she will.’

At the rehearsal of the third act, Milton, in torn trousers and with his chest bared, was pacing around like a nervous mother. A string band was playing: a guitar, several ukuleles, a drum and bamboo base, as well as village instruments made from halved coconut shells and tin cans. The chorus line of plantation workers was practising its steps – hands, feet, laughter. For Martha, as much as for Rika, it was stepping into a world she’d not known how to join.

In the doorway, the threatened sister – a student from Mela’s village on the harbour – was reading a book. Over at the side, Laedi was talking to Wana, a student she knew from the Trobriand Islands. Wana was small-boned, a girl still, with soft brown skin and wide, high cheekbones. She was hiding her black curls under a beanie, and stuffing cushions under an apron to turn herself into the planter’s cook.

The director was Aro, the tutor from the Modern World Literature class. He’d worked in theatre in Auckland. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s start. Remember, this is a rehearsal for Rika. Have you all met her?’ A round of applause. ‘Yes? Good.’ His hands were up, quietening everyone. ‘Are you listening? Yes? Good. The thing is, having remembered Rika, you’re to forget about her, and forget the camera. Okay? Don’t look at her. Don’t look at the camera. She’ll find you. Okay? Then let’s start.’ He clapped his hands and jumped off the rickety stage.

The white planter, whom Milton had created without a redeeming quality, was being played by Sam, a friend of Pete’s from the history department, and though he’d never acted before, he entered into his role with good humour and a modicum of success. His flame-red hair was slicked back and darkened, his face painted with scowling lines and a mean black moustache. Somehow he managed to narrow his eyes to malignant specks, and there he was, bookish Sam striding around with a shotgun! Rika used three rolls of film that evening, and among them was an image of Milton standing with the gun over the prostrate figure of Sam. She moved in close and crouched, accentuating the threat, catching the sweat on Milton’s back and the shine of Sam’s painted moustache. Aro sent it into the South Pacific Post, who refused to run the photo as publicity, and then, in a twist of its own peculiar logic, published it on page three as an outraged news item. A warning, the editorial said, that the university was indeed a centre of subversion and a threat to order. Action should be taken before it became a ‘Mau Mau factory’. The vice-chancellor made a statement about the integrity of drama and freedom of speech. The Australian administrator’s office put out its own statement ‘regretting’ the involvement of university staff in the play. Sam and Aro wrote a good letter; they gathered signatures and waited for it to appear in the Post, which, of course, it didn’t.