As I walk fast past the rec room several people file out of it. Pumping from the flickering gloom is swelling music over the end credits of a film.

‘We there yet?’ someone asks.

They’ve all missed the Davis arrival. The bergs, the sunset, the flag, the tears. Another group’s in the mess, deep in a game of poker. Tyrel’s playing patience by himself in a corner. He looks up; he doesn’t smile. I go back outside.

The enormity of the ship has been stopped, obediently, by a meek line of forty-four gallon drums. Five of them. They’re lined up three kilometres from the shore. The hull can’t come in closer because it’s too shallow and too rocky ahead. A work crew from Davis has bulldozed a two-lane highway on the smooth ocean surface from the drums to the station.

‘The ice is three metres thick,’ says Steve beside me. ‘It’ll support a small truck.’

‘Can I walk in tonight?’

‘No fear. The light’s dropped too much. You’ll just have to be patient.’

‘Fuck patience. I don’t have much time.’

I’m rattled. I can’t stop thinking about what Jim said. One of the choppers arcs away in the sky. It rudely thuds above us then sweeps low beside us.

‘Showoffs!’ yells Steve to the sky. ‘The chopper’s full of goodies, Fin. It’s going on ahead to give the winterers time to read all about home before you lot invade. That’s when the madness begins. The morning, mate, the morning. Just you wait.’

I range the bow like a dog in a cage, pacing and stopping and starting again. I think of Max and the little I know of his world in the real world. I want to get off the ship. The still of Antarctica’s vividly in the air.

The cabin’s bright with light and tears and tension. Andrea’s on her bunk. She turns from me as I walk in the door.

‘What’s happened?’

Andrea says nothing. Blanca shakes her head. She’ll tell me later. I rummage in my drawer and find a chocolate bar. It’s broken. I reach across to Andrea and offer it. She says no thank you and smiles without looking at me and exits in a rush. Blanca puts out her contraband bottle of red wine on the desk. Pours two glasses. She stands by the porthole and runs her fingers through her hair.

‘That Patrick. He has dumped her. He tells her it is a shipboard romance and nothing more. He tells her to go and enjoy Antarctica.’

‘Bastard.’

‘Men. So, he is one of the ones with a woman every voyage. I recognised that in my one. I did not think it of Patrick. And neither did Andrea, poor darling.’

‘Poor thing.’