Blanca, standing tall before me on my return to the cabin. I can’t put my breasts in their faces, I don’t have the courage or the will for it. I mask my body in obscuring layers and wear my hair plain in a low ponytail with a centre part. My face can’t smile. My eyes are scratchy from tears. I can’t stop my face, I can’t stop the tears.

Hunger pushes me to lunch. There’s a trail of a tear over the soup, it slips into a fragile dangle on the end of my nose. Splashes. Dents the thickness of the soup. I rise swiftly from someone’s midsentence and Helen’s quickly behind me in the corridor.

‘I hope you’re not upset by that business last night. It’s just men. It wasn’t aimed at you, it was about women in general. They get excitable. It’s the hormones. And it just goes to show, Fin, that you’re popular. They’d only do it to someone they thought could take it.’

I can hear the tone in her voice telling me to pull myself together. I force a breezy smile. ‘No, no, I’m not upset. Really.’

Afternoon, in the computer room. I transcribe interviews with my back to everyone. They don’t see the thin trails of mucus from my nose, or the sleeves of my skivvy near my wrists that are spiderwebbed with snot.

A thick corded arm extends over my shoulder. A Toblerone bar is placed on my notepad.

‘I thought you might need it.’

Softly.

The arm retreats. I half turn my head. It’s Max. I can’t look him in the eye to say thank you.

We’re standing on an icefloe that’s fifteen metres wide. A chunk of ice floating on the Great Southern Ocean. Giant tiles of ice are ahead of and beside us, stretching as far as we can see. And then, almost imperceptibly, there’s a swell, like a giant’s slumbering breathing. Max looks across at me and sticks up his thumb and smiles.

I carry two screwdrivers in my pockets. They’re attached by ropes to my clothing. If I fall through the ice I’m to use the screwdrivers to haul myself out of the water. I’ll only survive a minute in it. Meg fell in last year. It took her thirty seconds to scramble out.