We continue our climb down the rocks. At the bottom Dip wordlessly takes my esky strap from my shoulder. Further on, he bends to the ground and hands me two tail feathers from a penguin. The quills are slender and snappable. I place them carefully into my top pocket, which is sewn thin and long for a walkie-talkie. It’s perfect for quills. I say thank you as Dip walks away. He turns and bows.

‘At your service.’

The darling, he’s trying so hard. There’s a big part of him that’s chivalrous and old-fashioned and sweet, but he does nothing for my mind. I think about the way Antarctica throws such a variety of people together. Boffins and tradies, journos and chefs. I don’t know how Dip and I would go in the real world. I can’t imagine it. I get the feeling he hasn’t had much physical experience with women. I kind of like the idea of that.

We drink, sitting in our socks, until late in the evening. The spirit bottles are kept on a high shelf behind the bar. Each one’s boldly marked with someone’s name. Pamela takes down her bottle and pours me a gin and tonic and tells me a great station leader has to be a good listener and a good mum and a good party thrower.

‘My best effort was the street parade. Practically everyone was on a float. The parade wound along several streets. The spectators were a row of video cameras set up on tripods.’

She tells me the reason she doesn’t like journalists is because the last one was a bastard. She says he kept on going places he wasn’t meant to and I say, a little guiltily, oh no, that’s terrible. She says the last straw was when she had to go and deliver an urgent letter late one night to the ship and she rode a quad out to it. When she climbed back down the gangplank the quad was gone. The journalist was roaring off in the distance and she had to walk back, at midnight, four kilometres over the sea ice.

‘He was an arrogant prick.’

She looks at me.

‘But I reckon you’re okay.’

With soft silliness spreading through my body, I ring Max. It’s late. I’m on the living quarters’ phone by the pooltable and he catches instantly the frivolity around me, the looseness in my voice which I’m trying to contain.

‘I hate that scene. You should see it here, the verbal diarrhoea about dicks and bums and tits. The major topic of conversation is how shitfaced everyone got the night before. Oh Fin, I find it so hard to relate to it all. Give me a good book and a sunset any time.’

‘And me?’