Chapter Two
Milo
This cannot be happening.
There is no way.
And yet – it’s her, all right.
It’s really her.
Allie.
And I mean it for real this time. This is not like all those times I thought I saw her – the back of another woman’s head in probably every single airport I’ve been in since we met; hearing her voice in the line at Bunty’s; or when I’ve picked up an unknown number, trying to sell me Wi-Fi or eco toilet paper, and for a split second, the woman on the other end has sounded like her . . .
No. No, this is for real this time. No mistaking and no mirage.
Allie Lake stands in front of me. The woman who betrayed me; who sold me out.
In the middle of the Arctic. Just a measly few hours from the North Pole. Seriously? She’s supposed to work at a university in Sheffield. A new one, as of the last two years. She’s not supposed to be here. I checked. More than once. Totally chalked it up to paranoia.
Except . . . she is here, not in Sheffield, and she’s looking at me like I’m a pumpkin crammed with TNT and she’s just waiting – hoping – for the thing to explode.
‘Hey!’ Jameson is beaming next to me. The man’s all, ‘Oh, the flight? It was awesome!’ and ‘So humbled! So super humbled to be here!’ and me – as good as a wax figure.
What am I supposed to even do? This isn’t just awkward, this is – agonising. Unbearable. This is beyond anything I could ever craft into words. Vexatious. There. Learned that one yesterday.
We’ve just endured hours of travel. New York to London, London to Oslo, Oslo to Longyearbyen and then a chopper to this station.
I haven’t slept. I’m wrecked. All I’ve been thinking about for hours is hot food and lying down in something bed-shaped so I can read until my thoughts dissolve and I can get some kind of rest. But now – now I just want to get the hell out of here.
Every fibre of my soul wants to turn and run.
How is this even happening? Jameson said this was a documentary for polar climate research. Why is Allie here? She does birds. In Bermuda. In Sheffield.
Oh, shit, we’re moving down the line. Handshakes and witticisms, out on the snow, just a hundred yards from the helicopter that brought us in.
Allie stands just a metre from me now and I’m opposite a woman called Polly, who wears a giant smile, and all while a choir in my head chants, ‘What the hell? What the hell?’ on repeat.
God, it’s weird here. Even without the woman who betrayed me.
We’re in front of a large grey, angular building that sort of resembles an aircraft hangar mated with a visitor centre at a nature reserve or something – the sorts of places you’d gather in, as kids, on a rainy school field trip to look at insects in petri dishes – but all that surrounds us is ice and snow, and jagged glaciers so breathtaking, my brain is trying to file it under ‘stage play backdrop.’ It’s unreal.
Totally freezing cold. Like the moon or something.
Wilderness overpowering man. Yet I can’t even fully digest it. Because of her. Allie.
‘Polly!’ Polly’s grinning, introducing herself.
She’s a round sunbeam of a woman and I’m nodding like an ass, laughing at absolutely nothing, shaking Polly’s excitable hand.
I’m so close to Allie now. So close. This all feels so impossible.
Not even twenty-four hours ago, I was waking up in my bed in New York, suitcase hastily and messily packed, texting my coffee order to Jameson, who was on his way in a cab to pick me up for the airport.
Now I’m here. Snow. Cobalt, crystal ocean. Allie Lake.
Fuck. How do I even play this? I mean, this is a huge place, right, so maybe I don’t have to play anything.
Maybe she’ll greet us, but I won’t even see her after.
It’s like a whole village in itself. Little Scandi lodges scattered across the land, cinnamon-brown slats, like those miniature railway villages you get in Macy’s windows at Christmas.
She’ll be busy, have places to be. Also, is it delusional to think she may not even recognise me?
Or if she’s even noticed? She hasn’t looked at me yet. Not even for a millisecond.
Filled with shame probably.
Good. As she should be.
We move down the line.
Polly introduces me to Iris – whoa, Iris. Allie’s best friend Iris.
I keep trying to get Jameson’s eye, try to convey, ‘Man, what the hell?’ without words, but he’s completely oblivious. Of course he is. He’s wanted to make a documentary like this his whole life.
Ah, shit, now it’s us.
Finally, inevitably, us.
Just me and Allie, face to face.
I never thought I’d ever be here, with her.
Even with the googling paranoia, knowing something like this was her world, knowing I only care about this stuff because she woke me up to it, had me wanting to sign every dime I ever earned over to it.
But she said she’d never do something this remote; that it wasn’t for her.
But who knows what was ever real? The phone swap – ‘The Leak’. The ill-famed leak showed me I shouldn’t take any of it as gospel. I’ve been so careful since. Vetting every decision I make, every person I let into my life like I’m a damn FBI agent.
Yet somehow, here we are. Two years later.
Two jackasses in the Arctic in neon coats I only bought because a stylist on a shoot said anyone worth anything is wearing them at ski resorts and I thought ‘Well, if that’s what real people are doing, then I’d better too.
’ And so continues my endless search for true love and acceptance in anything except myself . . .
In this case, a coat.
And I’m . . . discombobulated, looking at her. Those serious eyes that always look like they’re holding back oceans or something. The pursed, pink mouth, the pixie point of the ear her hair is pushed behind.
But mostly, I’m mad.
After two years, I’m still mad.
‘Hi,’ she says. Short. Snipped. We’re now opposite each other, and her eyes dart up to meet mine, and slide quickly away. I thought it might be shame, but she actually looks furious – I’d even say apoplectic – that she’s being forced to confront me.
Irritatingly, despite myself, somewhere, deep inside me, a dumb animal part of me reacts. A warm zip through my body at the invisible friction of her huge, blue eyes on mine. I can’t believe it’s really her.
‘Hey,’ I say. ‘I’m uh, Milo. Nice to meet you.’ Dumb, but it’s clear we’re playing the ‘pretend we don’t know each other’ game and I think that might be for the best for now. Although I’ve never been that good at improv.
There’s a lot of nodding, a lot of surface-deep, mind-numbing questions about flights and how cold it is.
Jameson really, amazingly, does seem totally dumb to it all, but he’s not of this earth right now.
He’s in full excited Jameson mode, my two-year-old romance leak far from his mind.
Iris, though . . . She definitely knows.
She keeps staring at me. Not with curiosity – no. Like someone who is pissed.
Fortunately, then, Polly leads us towards the research station. It sits on the snow like a space shuttle.
Allie trudges next to me. It’s just us.
Should I say something? I don’t know. And what do you even say to a woman you haven’t spoken to for two years because she betrayed you and leaked your personal text conversations across the world for money and a fresh start? Are we really pretending we don’t know each other? Should I . . .
‘Allie—’
‘No,’ Allie responds, quiet but harsh.
‘N-no?’
She folds her arms, eyes unblinking. ‘Whatever this is,’ she whispers out the side of her mouth. ‘I’m not interested. Weird entertainment, an apology—’
‘An apology?’ I whisper back. ‘For what?’
She scoffs. ‘I’m not talking to you anymore.’
‘I didn’t do anything, Allie.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘I didn’t. You did.’
‘I did not—’
‘Come on stragglers!’ calls Polly. Allie thunders ahead. Is she for real? The audacity of her. She leaks the phones and thinks I’m here to apologise? God, I wish I hadn’t said a single word. How the hell am I going to deal with four days of this?
The station is warm, air that smells of mealtimes and bleach. It’s interesting. Kind of like a spaceship and a hostel, rolled into one. Is this where Allie lives now, then? Does she have her own place here? One of those little wooden huts outside? Do I care? I don’t know. No. Maybe?
I’ve wondered a lot about her over the last two years, sometimes think about our calls from her bedroom.
Always low-lit, like rooms at nighttime in the fall.
Slanted wooden beams of her mom’s old farmhouse; plants and novelty picture frames.
The tiny village she’d show me glimpses of through the window.
Now I know nothing about her life. Well.
Except she’s as blunt as ever. That ‘no’ was so entitled.
But did I ever know anything real about her? Really?
‘I’ll get you some food, then show you to your rooms,’ says Polly. ‘How’s that sound? And then I’d like to sit down and run through a slight change of plan for tomorrow, if I may be so bold? God help us all, but I’ve been thinking. Hard.’ She gives a big grin.
‘Absolutely,’ replies Jameson, practically pulsating with excitement, like a full water balloon.
He’s been waiting for this. Counting down to it, kneading my shoulders, like you would an athlete, like we’re preparing for a race, saying, ‘This is going to be awesome, man, trust me.’ Preparing for a fight would’ve been more accurate.
To think we’d planned this, looked forward to it.
An evening of musing on New Year’s resolutions, Jameson pacing his house in pyjama pants, saying, ‘We need to start doing the things we talk about, Mildred. You’re happier, healthier.
You’ve had your healing. This is the year me and you do something,’ turning into this . . .
Then Polly turns to Allie, who’s straggling behind, blue eyes wide, wide circles, her face now totally inscrutable.
‘Allie, could I bend your ear?’ Polly asks.
‘Mm?’
‘I’ve had an idea. About your expedition tomorrow?’
And I watch, in real time, the colour drain from her face, in a way that is intangibly familiar to me.
The way you know, when you really know someone, that something has ‘happened’ and you’re just yet to be brought up to speed.
And I hate that, for a split second, the dumb animal wants to stride in and ask if she’s OK.
But then they’re walking away, Polly directing us to a weird hospital-like cafeteria, and a man greeting us with a handshake so hard, I can feel his fingers long after he’s released me. But all I can think about is Allie Lake. And the fact she’s here, and I’m here.
Four days.
I can’t do four days here. I almost laugh at the notion.
Jameson grins obliviously at me. ‘This is so sick,’ he says.
‘We need to leave.’
‘Huh?’
I lean in and whisper, ‘We need to leave, Jameson. Now.’