‘I’m not very good with women, Fin.’

I walk outside. The orange hull’s bright in the grey of the sea. The melancholy horn sounds loudly, summoning me back. I stand high on the cliff and can feel the wind and the wet bashing the city out of me, can feel it bashing away alarm clocks and deadlines and rush. I can feel, in the stiffness of my spine fighting the push of the breeze on the cliff, a readiness in me for change.

Dog seems oblivious of my response to last night as I wait for my chopper to be loaded for the flight back. He’s infectiously cocky. He gives me a quick rundown of the Macca nicknames as we stand by the helipad. Rip, because he’s always sleeping. Chux, because he ties his hair back with strips of Chux Superwipes. Hump, because his surname sounds a bit like a camel. Stretch, because he’s tall. Dog, from grade six and he’s forgotten why. I ask him about Hole.

‘Aw Fin you don’t want to know that one.’

‘Come on, Dog.’

‘It’s not fit for young ladies.’

‘Mate, I’m not as young as you think. And I don’t know about the lady bit either.’

We grin. The ship’s horn sounds again. Time to go. Dog hugs me and curls my fingers around the curved and grooved tooth of an elephant seal. He tells me to write and I say sure. I know I won’t. On the chopper ride back my fingers move over the long grey tooth as if it’s a chess piece, as if I’m contemplating my next move.

My cabin’s dim and bleak. It shouts emptiness. Andrea’s played cricket with Patrick and now she’s sleeping with him too. Blanca’s sleeping with a sailor she found in the bar. They’re men with a precious commodity—a cabin to themselves. I lie on my bunk in my suddenly lonely room and have strong tugging dreams of my family and close friends and a lover I was going to marry once and I wake with a jerk and want skin to miss.

I go down to the engine room where Simeon spills the secrets of the ship to me.

‘My dear, I was taught well. When I was thirty-two my mother, who’d been a Hoover housewife all her life, got a job. For a year she paid me to stay at home and watch the midday soaps. I had to present her each night with a detailed report. I have developed an ear and an eye for signs.’

Over the muffled roar of the ship’s two engines he tells me there’s been speculation and rumours about every female expeditioner who’s ever been to Antarctica, except for one. He tells me that after a month there are usually pairings with any single women and the other men then know not to crack onto them. He tells me that what the men hate, more than anything, is women who pick at the smorgasbord before them and move from man to man.