‘The chiefs decide,’ Janape said.

‘Did Josephine think Don would come?’

Janape shrugged. ‘She hoped. Maybe.’

‘Did you think he’d come?’

‘No. I did not like Don.’

‘He has a wife in Port Moresby,’ Rika said. ‘And a child. A girl.’

‘What name this girl?’

‘Bili,’ Rika said.

‘A good name,’ Janape said.

‘She’s a strong child. There’s another one coming.’ Rika held her hands out from her stomach to indicate the state of Laedi’s pregnancy.

Janape shook her head, clicked her tongue. ‘No good,’ she said, looking out into the rain. ‘Don brings much trouble to the mountain.’

Rika was angry. She was angry with Leonard. She was angry at his patience when she could not let him touch her. She was angry with herself for the night she’d given in to him, and to herself, and for the dark pleasure of her double betrayal as Leonard sweated above her. She was angry at the kindness of the hand Leonard rested on her back when she turned from him on their hard sleeping mats. Most of all, she was angry that he had not told her about Don, that he’d left her clumsy and childlike before Nogi. And all the time she knew that her failure to speak, her lack of courage, far outstripped his.

EVENTUALLY THERE WAS NOTHING FOR IT – NO ESCAPE, NO REMEDY – but to say the words. So when she was alone in the house with Leonard, watching the rain, Rika took a deliberate breath.

‘Leonard,’ she said, putting her hand on his knee and then wishing she hadn’t. ‘I think maybe I’m in love with Aaron.’

The ease drained from his face.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘When?’ he said. ‘How long?’

‘I don’t know. It crept up. Over the last month before I came up, I suppose.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’

‘I couldn’t.’

Leonard was shivering, wrapped in a blanket. Outside, everything had vanished into the thickness of rain. There were no mountains, no forest, no gardens, no houses, no village. Occasionally figures moved close enough to glimpse. Otherwise they were alone on a small ship, two crew members, each grappling with a different sail.

‘You’re very young,’ he said. ‘I’ve always known that. Infatuations happen. I remember what it was like.’ He took her hand, swallowing hard. ‘I can wait for it to pass.’

‘I don’t think it’s like that,’ Rika said. ‘I mean, at first I thought maybe. But it’s come to be more.’

‘Don’t do anything hasty.’

‘I have. I already have.’

Even that Leonard said he could understand, accommodate, bear.

‘I think I have to leave you, Leonard,’ she said.

‘No. You don’t have to.’

‘I need to.’

She heard the harsh tone of her voice and knew that it had shocked him as much as her words. She saw him understand that he’d missed the transformation signalled in her voice, and knew only that it had occurred. But she didn’t see anger. He got up and wrapped another blanket around himself. He walked onto the open platform and looked into the void. The ghostly shapes of banana trees bowed in the rain like exhausted soldiers. Against a waste of sky, Leonard began to sob.