Was this a point of pride, or of shame? Rika didn’t know. ‘Did you see my father?’

‘No. A woman showed me the plumes.’ When he saw the disappointment in her face, a hint of embarrassment, he said, ‘You must miss him.’

‘Yes, I suppose I do.’ She didn’t like to think of him too much, alone in the house on the canal, with her mother gone, and now her.

‘It’s hard being away from your own ground,’ Aaron said.

‘It didn’t feel like ground when I was there.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘All that water,’ and she caught the smile of his eyes.

‘So much, it sometimes goes under the houses.’ She laughed. Cautious.

‘Like the villages here. Have you seen them, built out over the harbour?’ He gestured to the window, oriented himself and turned to point towards the harbour.

‘Yes,’ Rika said. ‘I’ve been there, to Hanuabada.’

‘How?’ he asked, surprised.

‘Mela took me.’

‘Mela?’

Rika gave a little shrug, embarrassed to admit to a haus gel.

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘When I get a house, I’ll have someone to clean too.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘In the men’s dormitory. I’m a tutor there.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Two jobs.’

‘I don’t get paid for that one. It doesn’t take much work.’ That smile again. ‘Stopping them rioting, that’s all.’

Rioting? She couldn’t imagine Milton rioting. Jacob maybe, but not Milton.

Aaron was laughing, and she was blushing. ‘No, not rioting!’ he said. ‘Being unruly. Noisy. Sneaking girls in.’

She liked the way he spoke, his odd humour. ‘Where did you stay when you were in Leiden?’

‘In a room near the station.’

‘No riots there.’ Her own small joke, and he smiled.

‘No. No riots. No one to sneak in.’

‘Were you lonely?’

There was no smile this time, just a small nod. ‘I suppose I was,’ he said.

She could imagine how it would have been: nothing nasty, no sneer, no jeer, just the bland certainty that tolerance requires no gesture.

The door opened and Sam came in. ‘You two chatting again?’ he said, putting his folders from Gina on the table.

Aaron returned to the primitive and tribal arts dealer. He was concentrating. Working. She wasn’t. She looked at the little prints from the Anglican Mission that only the day before she’d found interesting, and her eye, her mind, wouldn’t stay there. They returned to Aaron. Something about his nose, the flare of his nostrils, and the way the eyes were set reminded her of Jacob. Yes, she could see they were clan-brothers, there was something similar about them. And yet, also distinct. Quite distinct, as if the features that were prominent in one receded in the other. The jut of the forehead in Jacob, the power of his shoulders, didn’t draw attention in Aaron, though when she looked at him they were there, just as clear. And the nose, so striking in Aaron, seemed quite different in Jacob, though both had the same high arch.