Tyrel’s in a far corner of the bridge. I didn’t see him the entire time I was on the continent. He stayed on the ship, co-ordinating the cargo. When I leave the bridge, he does too. He comes up swiftly behind me in the corridor.

‘I wish you’d stop being a journalist sometimes, Fin. There are some occasions when it’s just not appropriate. You really piss me off at times.’

Tyrel’s teeth are yellow and crooked and in my face. I bet he grew up in England.

‘Sebastian’s going through hell.’ My face is beginning to burn. Tyrel’s words trip over each other. ‘He—he went down south with his wife. It was one of those rare situations when a couple can get down south together. She’s a physicist. She ran off with someone else on the station and, and the three of them were stuck there over winter. For seventy-one days of darkness. Sebastian hardly said a word about it to anyone. Can you imagine the absolute agony of that? Can you?’

‘Oh God, I’m sorry. But I can’t help it. I don’t know these things. No-one tells me.’

‘We don’t tell you, Fin, because you’re a journalist. But I’m telling you. Not as a journalist.’

Tyrel’s smile looks as though it’s being dragged out of him. I could tell him that my whole job is about betrayal. But I don’t. He says sometimes life’s bloody tough. I say I know. He says he does too; he says he’s been knocked down so many times he can’t remember the numberplates. We suddenly, loudly, laugh and laugh.

There’s brilliant blue sky and sunshine as the ship slices north. There are sun sparkles on the ice in the hurting light. Antarctica is showing off, taunting us with its splendour as we sail steadily away from it.

The ocean’s crust cracks and rots. Ice thins and loosens and becomes as fragile as sheets of glass. There are no more penguins and no more seals. Then, one day, the snow petrels go too. Wandering albatrosses replace them, circling the ship. Fin-tu seems long ago. I feel as if I’ve become someone else. My face in the mirror looks different. Sharper. Older.

At night darkness closes in on the voyage. It’s strange to see it again after the luxury of light for so long.

Max is out in the light and the ice a lot. Just him and Jack, tagging the seals around Davis and monitoring the pupping. He writes that it’s light almost all of the time, and he loves it, especially the stretched out sunsets that darken into a sunrise and then it’s day and then sunset and sunrise again.