As I come from the bathroom I pass the trio again. ‘I told her, you’re beautiful, but you’d be more beautiful with my balls on your chin.’ There’s long, loud laughter. I wonder what I’m getting myself into. I think of my bloke-sized freezer suit. The way it masks my body shape. You wouldn’t even know I was a girl in it, with the balaclava and goggles on. I’ll have to unzip the suit to piss on the ice. The man from the auditorium will have to unzip his suit to piss on the ice. God knows what’s ahead. I don’t stay long at the pub. I’m not very good in crowds.

My brother Simon rings the Hobart hotel room, late, to say farewell. I tell him about the pub and he chuckles and he says I’ll be lucky to get ten minutes to myself on the boat. I’m fierce with my solitude and Simon knows it. He is too. He says with glee in his voice to keep him informed, as if he knows it’s going to be a disaster right from the start. He tells me he wants the spew count. He tells me he asked Mum why she was travelling all the way to Hobart with me just to say goodbye.

‘Because you might never come back, she said, and she was laughing. She said remember Perth, and then Alice Springs, how you say you’re only going to be away for a little while and then you don’t come back for a very long time.’

Simon laughs and then stops. ‘You are going to come back, aren’t you?’

‘You’ll have to wait and see.’

‘If you don’t come back, Finny, can I have your car?’