Rika was happy – hamamas. She was learning a new language. New faces, new names. She felt herself part of something. It was a feeling she hadn’t known for a long time, since before her mother died, before the house on the canal darkened with grief. Before Leonard rescued her from sorrow and shame. While the prospect of being alone in the house without him wasn’t what she’d expected, she found she wasn’t daunted. When they’d first arrived, the weeks had stretched ahead, empty as a plate, but looking back, they’d moved fast already and everything had changed. Even the house. She’d bought striped cotton cloth at the trade store to cover the table. The gallery of photos pinned on the wall kept growing. The house took a shape that was hers, and Rifle even planted pawpaw trees along the side of the house. She’d never felt the house in Oxford was hers. Well, it wasn’t: Leonard had lived there for years. She’d moved in with his books, his paintings, his furniture, and though he offered to change anything she wanted, she couldn’t see how else the house could be. She’d made curtains for the bedroom, that was all. Creamy cotton, a discordant note, but she liked to wake in the morning and watch the light shine through the cloth. The old curtains with their heavy backing had kept the room dark, and if Leonard rose early to work, she could sleep on till noon without knowing the morning had gone.

In this new house on the edge of the valley, it was Rika who woke first, rising with the sun. She went out into the cool air and golden light. She looked across to the hills and to the mountains rising up. Though it was June already, not long before Leonard was to leave for the mountain, her heart was light and full.

THE CONFERENCE BEGAN WITH A RECEPTION AT THE VICE-CHANCELLOR’S house, and among the guests who’d travelled from cities as distant as Auckland and Manchester was Simbaikan, Laedi’s mother.

Rika had been in the hot, crowded hangar when Simbaikan’s Fokker stopped with a roar, and she’d thumped down the steps calling ‘Laedi, Laedi,’ striding across the tarmac in a brown check shirt and sturdy walking shoes. She took Bili in her arms, sniffing her as if breathing the scent of generations. She put her nose to Tamba, and then drew a long, deep breath at her daughter’s shoulder. ‘Laedi, Laedi,’ she said again, showing all her teeth, the hook of her nose pushed forward by the wideness of her grin. She took in Rika with a look that could raise a mountain, and put her nose to the hand Rika offered. ‘Good spirit woman,’ she said, sniffing again. Tamba lifted the sack of taro that came off the plane with her. Rika took the suitcase and Laedi a bundle wrapped in banana leaves. Simbaikan regarded them with a monarch’s eye. ‘Very good,’ she said with a regal nod, ‘gutpela tru’, and the crowd parted in front of her as she forged ahead towards the doors, her granddaughter held aloft in her arms.