Blanca comes and sits beside me and pulls out a cigarette. I tell her to go away. The smoke stains the crisp cold air. She hovers, fidgety and not really listening, for ten minutes or so and then she’s gone, pulling out a cigarette and trailing smoke in her wake.

I sit and feed Fin-tu and watch the bergs go by. They’re so dignified. Some are like Walt Disney castles or pooltables or Cambodian temples or Uluru. One day we pass one that’s so blue, it’s as if its ice has captured a piece of the sky inside it.

I lean back and close my eyes in the sun. It’s red and warm and bright under my eyelids and I put my hands behind my head. I feel a tugging at my pocket. Fin-tu’s under my arm. He has a piece of krill in his sharp black beak.

‘You little bugger.’

The tape recorder’s on the bunk when I walk into the cabin. Jim dropped it off. The cassette I left in it is gone. I pick up the machine and check it. The cassette wheel spins and whirs to a stop. Jim’s run down the batteries. I check the battery meter. It tells me the batteries are okay, but I change them anyway. I press play and the cassette slows and stops again, as if it’s run out of puff. I try to shake away its weariness. I press play. Nothing happens. It’s stuffed. It’s the only tape recorder I have on the voyage, the single most precious item I’m carrying with me. I’m only halfway through interviewing the people I want to on the ship and I haven’t even got to Antarctica. Fuck him. I stride down the corridor, my face tight.

He’s lying on his bunk reading a porn mag.

‘Aw, Fin, I’m sorry.’ He smiles his sweet smile. ‘I just thought it was me, that’s why I didn’t tell you. I thought I was pressing the wrong buttons. Mate, everything breaks in Antarctica. And the bugger is, I didn’t even get a chance to do any interviews for you. There goes my brilliant career. Hey, have a beer, mate, sit down, you look as if you’ve just fought a bushfire.’

I tell him it’s a fucking problem because I’m getting paid to do a job down here and now, thanks to him, I can’t do it. I ask him what the fuck he’s going to do about it. He snaps upright on his bed.

‘Fin, we’ll get it fixed. We’ll put a notice up in the mess. One of the boffins’ll know what to do.’