There’s a sunset service for Max on Anchorage Island. It’s held near the cross of the man killed a decade ago in the explosion. The Davis tradies erect another steel cross for Max. It reaches up six metres into the wide Antarctic sky. Around its base is a huddle of rocks, each one placed by a different expeditioner. As word of the relationship spreads around the station, I begin to get emails. They wish I was there. Blanca rings and says darling and cannot go on because of the sobbing from both of us. She hangs up the phone, telling me she wants me there with them. I’m ambivalent. I want to see Max. I want to say goodbye. But I feel now that I can never return to Antarctica. I just don’t want to go back. His body is in a science lab on the station until his family releases it for burial in the ice. I feel so removed from it all.

I know so little of Max in the real world. His parents and brothers have never spoken to me. I ring the Antarctic Division to get their number.

The woman on the end of the line’s defensive and officious.

‘You do realise he was in a de facto relationship? Margaret is officially listed as his next of kin. I don’t know if the family knows of you. I don’t want you being difficult.’

‘Oh no, of course not, of course. I realise that. I just wanted to pass on my sympathy.’

I hang up. I feel suddenly unclean. The tears come and come.

Eleven: Terror Australis

ELEVEN

TERROR AUSTRALIS

Len says we’ll get rain as we sail into Hobart.

‘I’m a surfer, Fin. I can smell these things. I just know.’

We stand on the deck and smell Tasmania before we see it. Smell soil and trees on the breeze. Then see green. Hills and trees and lawns. God, it’s been such a long time.

A cosmonaut who’d been in space for a year said he knew he was truly home the moment after he’d crashed in Siberia and opened the hatch and smelled the earth. I know what he means as I breathe in deeply the smell of the land. We’re home.

Len was right, it’s raining softly. We’re the coldest we’ve been on the trip because we’re in T-shirts and we’re standing wet in the wind. Our flesh is goosebumped. It’s odd to see it. I rub the wetness of the air between my fingers and shiver.

The group on the dock looks solemn and small. My mother’s standing a little to the left of it. Her stylish city-face keenly searches me out. I see her before she sees me. She looks very small and very alone and I’m suddenly crying.