‘You should leave him,’ Rika said. Her voice flashed with anger and shock.

‘How can I? I’m pregnant and I haven’t any money.’

That evening the mood was sombre. Aaron talked about his return to the village, his old uncles weeping, and the feast and dancing. He and Jacob had both dressed in plumes. They’d come to an agreement – a pact, Aaron called it – that neither would use the new ways against the old. Rika wanted to ask more, but whenever her eyes met his, they couldn’t stay there. A car was parked outside on the road. When Pete went out to investigate, it drove off before he could see the driver’s face. Then it was back again, the same car, and this time Sam and Aaron went out. ‘Watch out, you black fucker,’ the driver called as the car slid away again. ‘Coward,’ Sam shouted as it turned the corner, out of sight. Half an hour later a different car drove slowly past, turned and stopped where the driver had a clear view to the window. Rika wanted to pin a sheet across the louvres that were open for the air, but Wana said, ‘No, it’ll look like we’ve got something to hide.’

Washing up with Martha afterwards, Rika was incandescent with fury. The unfairness of it, the impossibility. The prejudice. That was one thing. Worse was the self-consciousness that had her feeling she couldn’t look at him, not as she used to. Not with everyone thinking what they thought, when there was nothing to think. Nothing. And anyway, all she wanted was to be with him. Not be with him, just be there, be here, knowing him.

‘Oh, oh, oh,’ she cried. ‘What is it with everyone?’

IT WAS AARON WHO DECIDED THEY SHOULDN’T SEE EACH OTHER ‘for a while’. They should be cautious, let the rumours drop away. He went to the library to tell her, let her know his sorrow, his regret, and found that she’d gone to Mela’s village for the day. The table was neat, there was no sign of her. A lecturer from Geography was working alone at one end, looking at maps from the war. Aaron sat at his usual place, reading documents from the United Nations; but his concentration was bad and his eye kept returning to Rika’s empty chair.

‘She’s not there, mate,’ the lecturer said.

Aaron went into Gina’s office. ‘Will you tell her I won’t visit for a while?’ he said. He was putting her at risk, he said. Leonard was alone on the mountain, Jacob had returned, and teaching had started. He’d come to the library on days she wasn’t there. Could Gina tell her that? Just until things calmed down.

‘Prudent?’ Rika said to Gina. ‘What do you mean, prudent?’

Two days went by, then a third and fourth. For Rika, each might have been a month. Energy drained from her. At the beach, she didn’t swim. She lay under the tree and stared into the branches. She turned towards the road as if Aaron might suddenly appear, as he had back in the days when the only person to object was Bili. She looked out to the rippling line of the reef, out to where she’d swum with him, his body curved in the water as he took her hand and showed her how to dive down, into the silence beneath. Irivi. The word for water in his language. It was as blue out there, the canoes still slid by, men still fished with their nets off the rocks, but Rika, who once saw everything, saw only that Aaron was not there.