‘Good practice, my love,’ she says. ‘And by the way, how many cocks did you have to suck to get this little gig in the ice anyway?’

I smack my lips and grin. ‘Too bloody many.’

None. The newsroom was offered an Antarctic trip by the Australian government and I put up my hand and was chosen. One journo a year, on average, gets to go. It’s good PR for the government, it helps in publicising and demystifying the nation’s presence on the ice. The newsroom jumped at the offer and so did I. The voyage gets me off the police round which I suspect I’m too good at because I’ve been stuck with it for too long. And it gets me off the morning shift.

I ring the number on the press release. The talent’s good. She says last summer the hole over Antarctica was the size of Europe. Good grab. She says each year the hole’s getting bigger. Great stuff. When the tape’s turned off at the end of it I tell her I’m just about to go down there. She’s the first woman I’ve spoken to who’s been. I ask her what it’s like. She says for a start there aren’t many women. She says that on the Antarctic stations everything I do will be watched, from talking with a man to drinking at the bar to eating in the mess. She says a woman’s attention is sought persistently.

I tell her I think I’m going to like that a lot and she says, suddenly fierce, that after a while the attention’s utterly exhausting and she wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

‘And if it gets to the stage of actually working out a way of sleeping with someone, well, you have to be incredibly discreet. Most people haven’t been touched for a very long time and they don’t want to see the people who are getting it, flouting it.’

She’s warning me. She wishes me a crisp good luck and hangs up.

Midday. Knock-off time. Lyn yells goodbye and asks what’s the ratio of men to women, down at that place I’m going to. I tell her there are very few women and a lot of beards and that touching is taboo.

‘Well that’ll be a challenge then.’ We laugh. ‘Hooroo.’

My body’s too tired to do the twenty minute walk to my flat. I get the train home to dinner and bed.

A man called Jim rings in the thick of work. I’m trying to catch something on the scanner about a babysitter and the baby’s stopped breathing but there’s an ease, a sureness in his stranger’s voice that stops me still. It’s as if he knows me.