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.

‘The best relationships between expeditioners who are already attached in the real world are the ones where the two of them shake hands at the voyage’s end and say thanks for that, it was great, have a nice life. But I’ve seen dreadful scenes on the wharf with the man saying goodbye to the Antarctic girlfriend, who’s yelling at him, with his wife who hasn’t seen him for eighteen months beside him in tears.’

‘Who’s the woman there’s never been gossip about?’

‘I’m not telling you that, my dear. You’re a journalist.’

‘Aw Simmy, come on.’

He holds the woman in high esteem. I’m not going to find out.

‘What about homosexuality?’

The response is brisk.

‘They’re not that type of men, the ones that go down south.’