Tyrel, as I bash into him in the corridor. I didn’t see him coming out of his cabin door. His knot of anger stops me still. I can’t think of anything to say. I murmur sorry, quickly, and walk away.

‘You should learn to fucking slow down, you maniac. You’re fucking dangerous.’

The voice is as taut as stretched wire. I don’t turn around.

Sun bashes my eyes, snapping them tight. The day’s seared by brightness. I’m not wearing my Antarctic issue sunglasses because I want to see, unfiltered, the white around us. There are giant water lilies of ice. They’re packed tight. The world’s still and vivid and bright. I squint against the hurting glare.

Several hours later my eyelids can hardly open. It’s as though a film of milk is over them. I panic. Blanca fetches Helen. Her diagnosis: snowblindness. The surface of my eyes has been savagely sunburnt. My temples are thudding. I have to stay in bed, in the soothing dimness of the cabin, for three days. Blanca brings chocolate biscuits and hot Milo from the mess and sings Spanish love songs to me. She’s stopped going to the bar. She says a man came up to her while she was having a beer and told her God gave her feet to stand on and boobs to have sex. She didn’t know what boobs were. She had to ask Jim. Blanca says she’s not sure about these Australian men.

Andrea I rarely see. She’s with Patrick. And she’s smug.

Max visits. I ask him where Jack is and he says in their cabin and he looks surprised at my question. He brings me chocolate and reads to me from Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow. I close my eyes and listen to his voice and think that Miss Smilla’s like a bloke in drag. Jim visits. He brings three beers and asks for my tape recorder. He wants to take over my job while I’m stuck in my cabin. I give it to him. It could be interesting. I tell him to look after it. Callie, a student vet, visits. She describes the world outside the porthole. She says there are meringue puffs of ice with the sun glinting off them and there’s a big blue sky. She reckons it’s just what heaven looks like, only it’d be warmer.

I sleep scrappily. My eyes water. The milky sensation takes a long time to go away. I feel a loneliness as vast as a desert.

Snowflakes kiss my cheeks and my bare hands as I watch him.

‘It’s not cold. I didn’t think it wouldn’t be cold,’ he says as he holds his bare hand to the snow.