There’s a new voice in me. There’s no welcome in it and a deep tiredness and an oldness. I recognise, startled, my mother in the voice. My face turns back to the wall and the blankets are drawn close around my shoulders. There’s no talk between Blanca and Andrea. I don’t know what their faces are saying. There’s another knock.

‘Go away,’ I say loudly as Blanca opens the door.

It’s Max.

‘Hey Fin, I’m going outside to have a look at the stars. Wanna come?’

We climb high to a star-crammed sky. The world outside seems to have stopped, it’s glistening and crunchy as we walk across the decks and climb steel ladders to the very tip of the bow. We say nothing. There’s a clarity to the sound of our feet on the hardened snow; the noises are strangely new and magnified and crisp. As if during the day they fray, competing with all the other noises, and they need soothing night to become fresh again.

Max points to a satellite moving calmly among the stars. It’s stately on its slow path.

‘You know, Jim reminds me of my next-door neighbour when I was a kid. He was the star of the street, Fin, but it was like, everyone loved him except for his family. They couldn’t stand him.’

I smile.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah.’

I laugh. I feel as though I’m young and overreacting and silly. ‘I’ve just got to toughen up I suppose. You know, Max, I think I’m really strong and grownup but I’m not. You know, the big tough journo thing. I’m just not.’

Ivan trains the spotlight on us. We turn, rabbited, in the strong track of light and laugh and wave and throw snowballs at the far bridge windows. The snow falls well short of its target. We go down below.

In the mess Max makes me a hot Milo. We drink the warmth in our cups under too-bright lights. It’s midnight. We say goodnight and go off to our beds.

The morning staggers. I pass Tyrel in the corridor and he smiles, friendly and soft and in sympathy. I can’t smile back. I turn from the door to the mess. I can’t face breakfast and the faces, the stickmag men’s faces. I feel shrivelled.

‘Don’t be intimidated by the boys, darling, whatever it is happens. My response would be to push my, what is it, boobs, right in their face. They want to see you down.’