The bar late at night is where a lot of winterers come out of hiding after the ship’s arrival. Blanca and Andrea and I are usually there. And Wesley. And Dip. Most of the ten men and three women who’ve wintered at Davis only slowly thread themselves among us. We hear scraps of gossip. There’s one couple who’s paired up. They’re rarely seen. There’s the physicist whose child was born six weeks after he arrived, and the first time he’ll hold her is when she’s a year old. And there’s Wesley, but no-one talks about Wesley much. Poor bloke, they’ll say and leave it at that.

He points out a ladder in Blanca’s stocking that disappears under her skirt. ‘Is that a stairway to heaven?’

There’s a beat and Blanca’s laughter screeches over the top of everyone else’s. Pamela comes up to us. Asks Blanca not to laugh. Says it’s irritating several other people on the station. She walks away. Our group falls silent.

‘She is, what you call, the menopause.’

‘Blanca darling,’ I tell her, ‘I think you’re right. You have to laugh. I need it, it keeps me sane. I guess it just takes a little while for some of the winterers to get used to us.’

Wesley looks at us. ‘It’s strange to look at a new face after so long with the old faces. It’s strange and it’s good. You’re all like big puppy dogs, you new lot. Getting under our feet.’

A grin, like a light, is switched on his set face.

A chopper lifts swiftly and arcs low to the west. Its destination: Tzen Darn, the Chinese base a hundred kilometres away. The grim delegation that’s on board is made up of the pilot, station doctor, ship doctor and station leader.

‘A man’s gone mad,’ says Dip. ‘The Chinese do it grim compared to us. Their base only gets one ship a year, in January. We get five or six, from October till April. And I tell you, their station is pretty bloody basic compared to ours.’

The Chinese man sits quietly with us at lunch time. Dips tells me he’s a physicist and he speaks fluent English and he’ll be on the boat when it departs and he’s here because he tried to kill himself. I want to interview him. It’s a good story. I know Pamela won’t let me. I watch him eat the lettuce that’s crisp from the Davis hydroponic shed. He eats hunched, concentrating on the fresh food before him. He looks up once and catches my eye. I smile. He smiles back. Raises a fork held oddly in his hand.