‘God yes, and you. I’m such an outsider. I always want to bend the rules. I hate the rules here. The limits on where you can go and the limits on when you can eat. I hate being told when and where I have to eat. I want to do it when I feel like it, just like I want to make love to you when and where I feel like it.’

People pass. They pat me and smile at me and want a bit of the conversation with what they think is the real world. There are yells of hello mum, and she’s been a good girl, their liquor-logged voices aiming roughly at the phone.

‘Go away!’ I laugh and then I’m back with Max. I can hear his annoyance.

‘I’m so scared of losing you, so scared of everything being lost when you get back to your world.’

His vivid honesty brings me up abrupt. There’s an absolute sexiness in his want and a trembling, delicious, deep in my thighs.

I don’t get to the mess until late the next morning. On the whiteboard is a note. Fin ring Rex, urgent. I rush to the soundproof booth. He’s arranged it with Pamela. He’s got the chopper flight. He’s coming over early.

Nine: Wind Whip

NINE

WIND WHIP

Wesley tests me on the station lingo as we sit in the bus shed by the helipad and wait for the thump of the chopper from the hills to the west. Snotsicles are threads of clear mucus suspended frozen from the nose. Fort Knox is the locked station storeroom, where grog and chocolate are kept. Chernobyl’s the station incinerator. Woolworths is the building where supplies are kept. The Culture Centre is the toilets, because people read there.

The sound of the chopper thuds in the distant sky.

‘What are you so excited about, Fin? Sit down. Unloading isn’t that much fun.’

When Max and I make love in my grimy donga we cry out and hoot and squeal and shout. It’s the first time we’ve been able to do that. Before, Max always had to trap the sounds from my mouth in the cup of his palm. Before, we were always crammed tightly together. Before, we were always checking our watches.

‘It’s like switching from black and white TV to colour!’ he says.

We lie, leisurely and naked, into the luxury of a long afternoon. We read bits of books to each other and I fall asleep on his arm and wake and we make love again.

We have three days before my ship departs.

‘Oh, Antarctica,’ he sighs.