We walk back to the base, winding down from the cliffs through tufts of long yellow grass to the coal-black beaches. Around us are the bark and belch of the elephant seals. They’re like giant slugs clumped in close harems on the sand. Strong brown skuas are buffeted by the breeze overhead and the head of a killer whale rises up and then sinks in the furious green of the ocean. Penguins keep an affronted distance, on the beach, and the rocks, and the helipad.

Dog’s apologetic and stumbly about the men in the mess. He says the blokiness inside is all bluff and the men have forgotten how to treat women because it’s been such a long time. He’s sure they’ll remember by the time we get back. He coaxes me to put my hand to the coarse black curls of a seal pup, as if to make up for it all.

The fur’s stiff and damp and not at all soft. The bull seals peer at us like fat old men peering from behind newspapers in an English club. Some of them break from their stillness with a huff, and lumber away on too-small flippers. They heave-ho their rippling bulk. It’s a strange, ugly sort of grace.

Dog tells me the most common thing the doctor treats on the island is seal bites. There’s the punch of smell in the wind; it stinks of rotting kelp and salt and wet.

‘Gee it’s good to see the ship,’ Dog says. ‘It was so cold this season, the water froze in the pipes. We had to flush the toilets with buckets of sea water. We all got a bit on the nose, but we had a ripper of a year.’

His body’s softly going to fat. He can hardly touch my breasts. He stares, reaches out, draws back. Then he places a large, cold hand on my chest. The hand stays there for a long time. He’s grave and quiet.

The woman I was meant to be sharing the hut with has gone off to sleep with an old lover, Dog’s best mate on the island. Dog thought he’d better come up to the hut to keep me company for a while. He told me people were under the impression he’d gone to check the astronomy shed. I’ve been put high up on a clifftop for the night. The ham shack’s a building with two mattresses on the floor. Officially, it’s for amateur radio enthusiasts. Unofficially, it’s for people on the station who have to get away from other people on the station. I’m in bed with Dog because I’m intrigued to be with a man who hasn’t been with a woman for a very long time. And because I want to be touched. And because I have nothing to lose.