He told her that he had woken suddenly in the night, had put on his clothes and let himself out of his uncle’s house on the hillside. The humid air had enclosed him in warmth. He remembered looking up at the sky and thinking how beautiful the moon was, simple and round, as it sank towards the horizon. He had followed it, walking towards his father’s former plantation. Once there, he saw that the kerosene lamps were lit, the flames floating in the dark. As he walked, he counted the trees aloud, turning at the thirtieth row, coming to a standstill at the thirtieth tree.

He knelt down, listening to the sound of night insects, of birds that he couldn’t identify. Owls, babblers, even in his childhood he had not been able to distinguish them. He began to push the dirt away, seeing the child that he was kneeling there, scrabbling at the ground. “I thought he must have known everything. He sent me on this errand because he knew his fate and he wanted to keep me away. I did what he had asked, only by then it no longer mattered. But still I went into the plantation.”

He dug at the ground for a long time, at first calm, but then, finding nothing, panic overwhelmed him. The lights blurred, he was sweating and could not see, but still he continued, with no idea of time or reason. Eventually, exhausted, he dropped into sleep. Some time later, one of the tappers must have found him and sent for his uncle. They were all gathered there at the thirtieth tree, labourers, family, and the boy that only Matthew could see, standing in the shadows. When his uncle asked what had happened, Matthew could only point at the boy. He wanted to go to him, pick him up, but he could not move. His uncle tried to put a coat around his shoulders, but Matthew pushed him away. When his uncle approached him again, Matthew lashed out. Then a terrible numbness took hold of his body and his legs gave out from under him, and the men carried him back to the house.

“They tried to keep me from leaving,” he said, looking at Ani now, “but I told them that I needed to sort out my thoughts, I needed to see you.” He paused for a moment. “Sometimes, in my dreams, I am almost able to reach him. I am telling him how to escape, how to leave Sandakan, I am almost holding him, but then he turns away.”

Later, lying together, his skin was damp and feverish, and he put his arms around himself as if he were cold. He said there was a story she told him once, long ago, about a man who harvested gold from the fields. All these years he had tried to recall it, but somehow it had become confused in his mind. Did she still remember? he asked.

She said yes, and as she told him, his breathing grew steady, lengthening out. In her story, the man walks towards the house standing alone in the middle of the field. The woman, old and stooped, promises him a gift more valuable than money. He will no longer be without land. For all eternity, he will not be at the mercy of the world.

That afternoon, while Matthew slept, his uncle came to the house. He was a tall, imposing man dressed in a jacket and tie. Ani had spoken to him before only in passing, but when Mas opened the door, it did not surprise her to see him, awkward and dignified on the front steps. Mas invited him in. They went together to the sitting room.

“Matthew is resting, I hope.”

“Yes, datuk,” Ani said.

His uncle nodded. He and Mas talked of other things, of the primary school and the construction of a new gymnasium on the grounds.

Ani’s attention was distracted by the sounds drifting in from outside, the children running between the houses, their voices rising and falling with the momentum of their game.

At last, he turned to Ani, and what he had come to say was finally in the open. “Matthew should go to Tawau as soon as he is able. He does not belong in Sandakan.” He paused, looking at her. She thought she saw pity in his eyes, a feeling of compassion. “I have said all this to him already. I suspect he knows it is true.”

Her body tensed, and she kept her hands clasped in her lap.

Mas said softly but firmly, “They are adults now. We cannot make their choices for them.”

“They are acting like children,” he said. “And they must let go of it.”

In her confusion, his words seemed to lose their meaning. She reached for an answer that would not come. “He has only just returned here.”

“He is ill,” his uncle said. “And he need not be.” He began to describe Sydney and Melbourne, where young people from across Southeast Asia were being trained as doctors and engineers. When they returned home to their countries, they would bring with them a sea change.

She did not know how to respond to him, how to explain what he was asking of her. She said perhaps she could go with Matthew, they could travel to Australia together.

“No, Ani,” Mas said. “Immigration is strict. That is not possible.”

The silence seemed to stretch on for minutes until, finally, Matthew’s uncle stood, preparing to go.

“In the end, the decision belongs to you both,” he said. “But I am only thinking of Matthew’s future. All I ask is that you do the same.”

The next day, Ani went alone to the hospital clinic. An hour passed, and then another, as she sat in the waiting room. Beside her, a young woman drowsed, her baby sheltered in a sling tight against her chest, fast asleep. The doctor who eventually examined Ani, an elderly Chinese man, was hurried, preoccupied. He gave her the results of her test, saying that her baby was due in seven months. Then he smiled, congratulated her, and left the room to see his next patient. Ani sat in the room, unable, for a time, to stand and walk into the afternoon heat.

She remembered being underwater with Lohkman. How the glare of the world had disappeared, softened by the water. She had taken a breath, then dived straight down, exhaling, air escaping from her lips. Her body had sunk towards the sea floor, moving among the crevices of rock and the waving vegetation. There was a puffer fish that Lohkman had captured in his hands, rolling it through the water like a child’s toy. He wanted her to listen for the shoals of fish, to learn this talent that he himself had acquired. But all she heard was a dull roar, every sound blurred and inseparable. She wondered if her child would soon be able to hear her voice through the echo chamber of her body, if it would be able to distinguish it from all the others – just as in dreams she heard her own mother, one voice rising from the din, calling to her across the divide, telling her to let go, to stop searching backwards. You cannot save us, she said. You cannot change our fate. The past is done.

Outside, the light, the brightness of the sky, caused her to stumble, and she grabbed hold of a railing for support. An elderly man, standing on the steps, offered his umbrella to shade her from the sun, but she shook her head, recovering. She went slowly out into the road and turned in the direction of home.

So she was the one who began it, who turned their conversation in another direction. On a beach west of town, they walked together along the empty sand. In the distance, she could see the red hills of Berhala Island, the currents sweeping past, the tide curling against the shore. She said that now, after all these years, she was finally ready to leave Sandakan, to go to her mother’s family.

His face, when he looked at her, shook her resolve. She saw his confusion giving way to fear. “When did you decide? Why have you decided this now?”

The words caught in her throat, but she forced herself to speak them aloud. “If things were different, if there was nothing to hold you here in Sandakan, what would you do?”

He refused to answer, but she would not relent. He shook his head. “Nothing has changed for me.”

“But Australia.”