Chapter Five
Allie
Milo and Jameson enter the canteen like they’re about to stride onto the stage at Wembley Arena. A boyband moonlighting as an Arctic rescue crew. What on earth are those coats for? If not to trigger a mass flurry of visual migraines.
Polly pogoes up from the table beside me. ‘Sit, sit!’ she beams. ‘We have baked oatmeal, and we have coffee. Oh, and two different types of tea. Mint and . . . is that English breakfast? I can’t think.’
Polly is so excited this morning, she’s practically crimson with it.
Sometimes, she reminds me of Mum – Mum after we moved away from Dad, that is, when every morning was like waking up on holiday – a decade-long, pent-up breath, released.
It helped, being around her when I first began working here.
Someone who reminded me of Mum, who checked in on me like Mum, and all in a place that gave me the quiet space to grieve, properly.
Polly’s hardy but warm. The type to keep trudging on with a smile on her face, never quibbling, because, yes, life can be tough, but it can always be tougher.
I normally find her comforting to be around.
Not today, though. Today, despite the crimson excitement, I just feel territorial.
Icy. Because I hate how the canteen feels different suddenly, with Milo in it.
No longer the sanctuary it slowly became for me.
It feels unsafe. And this is what it’s going to be like, isn’t it? Four days with him stuck here.
Jameson grins out multiple ‘hello’s and ‘good day’s (yes, really) and Milo utters a single, gruff, ‘Morning.’ His brown eyes are dark and serious, and he avoids looking at me, thanking Polly for the oats as she hands him a steaming slab in a bowl.
‘Allie’s favourite,’ she smiles. ‘Gustav, our chef, cooks up a favourite of the team’s before an expedition.’
He plonks down opposite me, clearly totally unmoved by the oat-based anecdote. Thick, wavy hair dangles over his face and he swipes it away.
‘Morning,’ I say. The word barely comes out.
‘Hi.’
He looks down at his bowl, away from me – he’s looking anywhere but at me.
Of course he is. Hopefully he’s wracked with shame.
Being here opposite me, being reminded I’m a real person he chose to use as a prop to elevate his flailing image.
From sell-out and love rat to healed romantic who loves his fans.
I don’t look at him either. Because, despite myself, all my ghost feelings are reacting like the past two years didn’t happen.
His face. It’s almost unbearable to look at.
He’s too . . . real. And somewhere inside of me, there is a choir of dormant emotions that don’t know what’s good for them, saying, ‘It’s really him. It’s really Milo!’
Worse is that he hasn’t changed, except for being a little rougher.
More stubble. Longer hair. (Both of which suit him, annoyingly.) He’s that same Milo who comforted me across airwaves and mountains, on that small screen in my hand.
Sleepy and bed headed. Night after night, that handsome face beaming into June House, a time zone away, making me smile so much my cheeks stung.
The ghost feelings would do well to remember it was the same face that laughed on The Really Late Show, too, that posed seriously and pouting on a shoot for a magazine two months later, where he, while shirtless, held a bloody red rose between his teeth, using us, my heartbreak, to further his career.
‘Well, we certainly won’t lose you two in those colours,’ chuckles Polly. ‘Isn’t that right, Allie? They’re extraordinary, your jackets.’
Extraordinary is one word. They’re walking highlighter pens.
‘Hell yeah!’ Jameson laughs, mouth full of oats. ‘Like little rays of sunshine, us.’
Milo smirks. ‘The idea is to be visible from space. If we get lost. Which, I say, is highly likely for two assholes without a clue.’
A wave of low chuckling travels around the table.
‘Mm,’ I say. ‘It is a bold choice.’
He glances up at me, gives a half-smile.
‘Albeit a potentially dangerous one,’ I add.
‘Sorry?’
Ironic, that apart from his ham-fisted attempt at conversation yesterday, this is one of the first proper things Milo has said to me: Sorry.
‘I just . . . the colour,’ I say, clearing my throat. ‘You may not get lost, but . . . you may die.’
The table falls silent.
Ah. It really wasn’t meant to come out like that. Like I was delivering a doomed prophecy at the start of a horror movie.
Iris, who has, as always, not spoken a word while her first coffee is consumed, lets out a big laugh of surprise. Jameson appears to be hiding a smile behind his spoon.
‘Sorry, I— I just mean . . . bright colours? Bright colours can attract predators. Bears. Sometimes. Rare, but – still.’
Milo’s eyes flick from his bowl, to me, narrowing slightly with amusement and irritation all at once.
Were they always this brown, his eyes? They’re quite ridiculous.
Like . . . caramel or something. Are they contacts?
I bet they’re contacts. Milo Ford is a hundred per cent the type to wear coloured contacts he doesn’t really need.
He’s the type to wear a neon orange designer coat after all.
(And to model swimwear and smoulder into a camera, surrounded by a thousand messages in bottles bobbing on the ocean, probably setting us back another hundred years in conservation.
I’d seen that particular image last year, suddenly, on a train station ad.
I’d frozen. Couldn’t finish my crisps after.)
‘And there I was thinking your oatmeal special might be the thing to kill me.’ Then he smiles, places that hand on his chest and says, ‘I kid. This is great. The oats. Not the death by bear stuff, but – thanks, Allie. Appreciate the heads-up.’
Polly and Jameson laugh – Jameson’s born out of friendship loyalty, I’m sure, because it’s not even funny.
Iris pretends she didn’t hear. And I say nothing else.
Yes, they’re just oats, but how dare he even jokingly insult my oats?
I remember arriving here, just six weeks after the leak, mid-darkest polar-night, just a few researchers left, eating by candlelight in the cafeteria, and I could smell something spiced and warming.
It was these – these baked oats. Someone placed some down in front of me.
It’d felt like an embrace. I had felt so alone until that moment.
It was a single spark of light in the dark.
And now Milo has gone and ruined that too.
We finish our drinks and breakfast, and Polly runs through the plan; we’re to meet in twenty minutes outside.
They’ll take the equipment over to Lars, on the boat, and I will take a snowmobile to pick up a rifle and meet them there.
She runs through safety too, suggests Milo and Jameson pick up boots from the storeroom in the station, and, only if they want to, jackets as well.
Jameson asks Iris about the bear and bright clothing thing.
She shrugs, says, tactfully, ‘Well, my girl’s not wrong, it can, but I’ve never known it to happen. You’re safe with us.’
Polly also reminds them of the radio silence rules, that phones and Wi-Fi-connected devices should be switched off.
Milo’s eyes find me then, in the group, and irony chuckles into the room like a clown.
We only met because of phones. Now we’re somewhere we can’t use them at all.
Not for rich actors to call for an emergency helicopter, nor for uncomfortable scientists to text their sisters with, ‘YOU WILL NEVER GUESS WHO JUST LANDED HERE!’ Not that Sian would probably say a lot anyway.
Weirdly, I felt compelled to reach out to her when Milo landed.
That yearning for family that happens when things are rough, regardless of whether the ties are unsevered or not.
We barely speak these days, since the diary leaked, since selling June House, but I think a message like that would have even Sian looking past everything she read about herself and biting for more information.
‘Oh, and while we’re here,’ Polly says. ‘I thought it might be good to pair everyone up? For safety purposes. Rare, but bears, and the like. There’s an equal number of us, so . . .’
My mouth opens, like a goldfish. No. There’s no need, queues up in my throat. No, no, we can just all move as a team. Let’s stick to working in a team! But nothing comes out.
And before anyone can say another word, as though Milo and I are caught in the crosshairs of a gun that’s about to go off, there it is. Of course it is. Polly says our names, together, and it’s like a remnant from another universe where the leak never happened.
‘Allie and Milo,’ she says. ‘You can be together.’
And like it’s nothing at all, Milo nods politely at Polly. ‘Lead the way,’ he says to me. Then, ‘Captain Lake.’