The Captain chuckles in his T-shirt and trackpants and baseball cap. ‘As soon as the unloading’s underway, I’m out of here, Fin. It’s my Davis indulgence, a run on the ice. There’s nowhere to do it on the ship. I’m busting for it.’

Patrick joins us, rubbing his knuckles over his head and yawning. A message blares over the intercom, telling us there’s a station briefing in the mess in twenty minutes.

Patrick says it’ll be a lengthy talk on the don’ts and a very brief one on the dos. And that somewhere in there there’ll be a permission to fart form. He says there’s always a permission to fart form. He winks at me and says he won’t be going.

I stare again at the polar icecap. It looks like some sort of encroaching force.

A new face walks into the room. There’s the surprise of young plaits and grey hair. She wears what we wear. She’s shorter than me. We hear a new voice. It’s soft and high and clear and in the tone of it there’s a warning, don’t mess with me. Pamela is the Davis Station leader. I can feel the men around me hushed and staring. We, the summerers, have been told not to push too eagerly into the wintering party’s small world, to stand back and give them space. We’ve been told the winterers will be shy and won’t mix easily. Pamela stands confidently before us. She isn’t betraying any curiosity at the new faces around her. She hasn’t seen a new face for seven months. She moves swiftly to rules. We know who’s boss.

‘There’s no smoking in the buildings. We’ve put aside an old shipping container for that. And there’s to be absolutely no dropping of cigarette butts outside. Showers are limited to four minutes because the snow’s so laborious to melt. And no-one, I repeat, no-one is to go beyond the station limits alone, or in a group, without permission. I authorise all expeditions and jollies, so come and see me about getting out.’

After the briefing Captain Crane introduces me to Pamela and she smiles and says quickly, oh but we don’t like journos, and we all laugh. She tells me I’d better watch out because she used to be a police officer.

We’re free to go ashore. Most expeditioners scatter to do a final pack. For them, Antarctica can wait. They have a year or more of it ahead of them. I don’t and I’m swiftly out.

William’s energy, his impatient tallness, is behind me as we step first and second down the steeply inclined gangplank. I step gingerly from the metal to the rough crunchy white as if I’m testing my toes at the edge of a swimming pool. The snow’s firm beneath me. Ahead of us is a motley collection of utes, a forklift, a small truck and a high metal oblong shape on tractor treads. William says it’s called a Hagglunds. There’s the shock of familiarity in Commonwealth numberplates. I laugh away the offer of a lift.