‘There’s all this work here.’

‘It can wait. The job can wait.’

There was something ominous about Gina’s tone. Rika turned to her, stopped the pretence of work. ‘Why are you asking?’ she said.

‘Alex thinks it’d help if you went up.’

‘Not while Don’s there.’

‘Alex and Don will be back soon.’

‘What’s it really about?’ Rika said. ‘I don’t understand. Leonard says Don’s playing music. Using up the batteries. It doesn’t sound much.’

‘It stirs up the young men, upsets the chiefs.’

Rika’s heart slowed to a very small beat. She didn’t want to think of Leonard up on the mountain, needing her.

‘Look,’ Gina said. ‘Don’s ambitious. He wants to be out early with his book on culture and change.’

‘So?’

‘He’s using the mountain as one of his case studies, as you know.’

‘I thought the point about the mountain was that it hadn’t changed.’

‘Everywhere changes. That’s Don’s point. He wants to take an example of a place that’s thought not to have changed, and show that it has.’

‘What’s playing music got to do with it?’ Rika said, irritated. ‘It’s not much of a change if it’s only there because of him.’

‘The music’s symbolic,’ Gina said. ‘It starts something off, uncovers the tensions. That’s what he’s after. Alex says the young men flock to him, he has them smoking cigarettes, listening to music, talking of independence. The chiefs hate it.’

‘Poor Leonard.’ Rika sighed. ‘He thinks anthropologists should be neutral.’

‘Yes, I know. Influence government behind the scenes. Alex used to think that. Don doesn’t. He says that if Leonard has his way, independence would be another twenty years.’

‘That’s unfair,’ Rika said. Poor Leonard. Poor, kind Leonard.

‘Apparently there was a row.’

‘I didn’t know that.’ Leonard’s letters said that Don was obstructive, and that he was behind schedule with the filming, but nothing about a row.

‘What’s happening with the film? Did Leonard say?’

‘He’s not doing as much as he’d like, that’s all I know. And that the chiefs want the film made. They think it’s good for the mountain. They want it told as their ancestors would tell it.’ Rika sighed. ‘There must be something else going on. Something personal.’

‘It is personal. That’s why he needs you.’

‘He made his other films without me,’ Rika said. ‘He might do better up there on his own.’ Her words sounded hollow, even to her. If he was asking for her, she should go. He’d brought her here, all this way, Leonard and the mountain, and now, suddenly, she didn’t want to go. Not now, on her own.

‘What’s going on with Aaron?’ Gina asked.

‘Nothing,’ Rika said.

Gina’s face was a question mark.

‘Nothing’s going on.’ A flash of anger.

‘I’m not judging you. Heaven only knows, I’d be the last person to do that.’

‘Then why are you asking?’ Rising tears.

‘Rika, Rika.’ Gina got up and put her arms around her.

Rika bristled. ‘Is it so bad to like someone?’