The weather closes in as the ship sails deeper south. Steve’s mop freezes to the floor of the hangar. Callie returns from outside with her hair snap-frozen. Captain Crane’s shower stops when he’s in the middle of washing his hair—the water’s frozen in the pipes during its long journey from the bowels of the ship to the uppermost deck. Doctor Helen circulates with a new warning: exposed flesh will freeze in a minute outside.

For Max and me the mornings drag when we meet in the mess or the corridors and don’t talk and don’t touch because there are always other people around us and for both of us there’s the strain of can’t.

We come together in a rush of relief in the early afternoons. Max waits with a book in his hand on the couch by his open door. It’s our neat pretext to the rest of the ship. We’re the readers, reading. I come in and shut the wide door.

‘How much time?’

‘Till four-thirty.’

Or three or two or five, whatever Jack’s allowed us.

I’m twenty-six. I’ve had seven lovers in my life. I’ve never had an orgasm. I never thought I would. Max gives me my first.

‘So sad, so sad.’

It’s our refrain as the ship shudders and scrapes to Mawson Station where Max will leave me. He’ll be tagging, counting, photographing and recording the seals and in his spare time he’ll be walking the hills and combing the old station buildings. He’s never seen them, of course, but he’s passionate about historical architecture. He tells me it’ll be like playing in history. He wants me there with him.

‘So little time. So sad.’

He’ll travel in a chopper to Davis Station after Mawson. He’s scheduled to arrive a day after I depart from it.

I pass Jack in the corridor as I leave his cabin and he returns to it. I say thank you, quietly, for everything. He says yes, it’s a difficult situation and moves swiftly away. He’s Max’s best mate. I want to crack his code. Get to know him.

Wind comes. It streaks aross the ice around us, kicking up snow and making it look like fast mist or dry ice. The flung snow obscures the bases of the distant icebergs. They look like they’re hovering in mist.

‘Scott’s party is snap-frozen in an iceberg somewhere soon,’ says Mark. ‘The ice chunk they’re buried in is due to break from the continent around now, Fin. Calving, it’s called. The iceberg will calve. I love that term. Scott, Wilson and Bowers. They’re preserved perfectly in the ice. What a way to go.’

Mark’s been listening intently to the talk of people around him. He stands quietly on the bridge with Max and me and shares his wonder with us.