‘I’ll tell him,’ Sam said. ‘He’s at a tutorial.’

‘Today, if possible,’ Martha said.

Sam looked at the timetable. ‘His last class finishes at four-thirty. He should be with her by five.’

‘Thanks.’

‘It’s getting difficult,’ he said. ‘Don was asking me yesterday. Very aggressive about it. Nothing’s happening, I said, and he swore at me.’

‘Is Aaron okay?’

‘He’s been in a dark mood all week. Not saying much, and I can’t get him out for a drink.’

At the library Rika was standing at the window alone in the room. She turned as Martha came in. ‘Of course,’ she said, sounding oddly like Leonard. Of course, what she’d meant to say last night was that it was time for her to join him, that’d been the agreement, and after the injury from Don, though its true nature remained obscure, she couldn’t inflict another. She must go to Leonard, go back and be his wife, he was a good man. Please, she said as if she was talking to someone other than Martha, would she not misunderstand her. It was time for her to go, that is what she had meant.

‘Do you still want to see Aaron?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She looked down onto the stalls across the street. ‘Yes,’ she said again, very softly. ‘Yes.’

When she turned back to Martha, her eyes were bright with tears. ‘What should I do?’ she said, and Martha knew from the way she looked that she was cast as herself again.

Maybe, Rika said, it’d be better if she went somewhere with Aaron, and not to Leonard at all. Not yet. Maybe she and Aaron should go to Townsville or Cairns. Or Darwin. Singapore. It didn’t matter. Anywhere where there were no eyes watching; it was impossible here, everything was impossible with everyone watching, and too much talking, and everywhere people who knew who they were. Yes, that is what they should do. Go away until it was over, until these feelings had gone, these … She raised her hands at the absence of words to say what it was that must go, be expelled, overcome.

Gina was in the doorway. ‘Go home,’ she said. ‘Try and get some rest.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Martha will stay with you.’

‘I’ve got lectures this afternoon,’ Martha said.

‘Aaron’s coming at five,’ Rika said.

‘Then you must make a decision,’ Gina said.

‘I can’t,’ Rika said again, and tears spilled over.

Gina came into the room and closed the door. Her face showed every one of her forty-five years. ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘Listen.’ In these situations, she said, we women are too often acted upon. ‘You talk about Leonard and his film. About Aaron and his future.’ Gina’s question to Rika was about her future. ‘What do you want for yourself?’ she asked. ‘For your own future.’

Rika shook her head. She didn’t know.

‘You don’t have to decide for Leonard’s film,’ Gina said. ‘That’s his job. And Aaron’s future is his future. The film will still be a film, and Aaron will still be whatever it is he’s meant to be. And you. You have a life that in the long run will amount to more than being with either of them. What do you want by the time you’re my age? You could be a photographer.’