Chapter Seven
Allie
I should not have done that.
I’m at work. I’m being paid to do a job. I promised myself I wouldn’t go there and let Milo hijack what I’m here to do, and yet somehow, it just exploded out of me.
But I just couldn’t help myself. It’s so hard trying to gulp down all these things I want to say; all these things that have been proving, like dough, in my mind for two years with nowhere to go.
That I really sympathised with rehab. I understood how hard it must’ve been for him to find a way to properly broach it and tell everyone the real reason why he left.
But why did he have to use me to do it? To relaunch himself as some bettered, wholesome romantic with a juicy scandal I never consented to.
Just so he could be seen in the way he wanted to be seen.
Even the coat – that bloody coat. It’s all so pretentious.
But still, his dad.
That mention of his dad and the way his voice shook slightly, the way a sharp jaw muscle pulsed beneath smooth skin.
In that split second, I saw him. Him. The Milo I knew back then, who hurt deeply because of his dad’s cold disapproval.
Because he’d planned for a son who wasn’t Milo – who carried on the family carpentry business.
Traditional. Modest. Humble. Ever since, he’d been trying to prove why he was worth loving, and, more than anyone, I understood that.
And I saw it, there, in his eyes. The Milo I trusted; the one I’d been myself with.
The Milo who had not only liked what he discovered, but celebrated it.
And for a long time, I’ve chalked it up to a stage play I mistook for being real.
That Milo being charming and conjuring a feeling of trust is just what people do sometimes, to get what they want.
Plus, the man pretends for a living. I’m sure he’s done the same with hundreds of other women since me.
Iris sometimes keeps me posted, mostly when she’s drunk.
‘Don’t you google him? Because I do,’ she’ll slur, and then it’s all, ‘A model called Karma allegedly dumped him and it was the week before Cannes, but they were never photographed,’ and, ‘According to Dating Who, he hasn’t been in a long-term relationship since Sara, but fuck me, the man’s been seen with a lot of mysterious strangers who all have legs up to their earholes. Do you think he’s OK?’
I’m grateful now, though, that I can only hear the bumbling engine of the snowmobile; jolting and bumping over lumpy, ice-topped terrain.
I can just pretend he isn’t even here at all.
I can pretend I can’t feel him, his warmth behind me, a contrast to the cold that bites my cheeks; that I’m not dreading the next few days, seeing him, reminding myself not to relax for a second, into that low, familiar, comforting voice—
Gah.
Shit.
I brake so abruptly, that I’m thrown to one side, and I’m mortified that a shriek bursts out of me. The Bay! I almost forgot, foot to the floor, to stop at the bloody Bay.
The snowmobile comes to a powerful lurch of a halt.
Milo’s arm has slid around my waist.
Oh, God. No.
We stop. Silent on the snow. Wind whooshes, ever present, like distant panpipes. A kittiwake swoops overhead.
His arm stays there like a tight, strong bracket.
Between us, there is total, total silence.
Then, ‘Shit.’ Milo breathes. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Fine.’ I wriggle away, like a cartoon mouse from a cat’s fist. ‘Sorry. I . . . I should’ve warned you. I messed up. I didn’t realise we were here.’ Was too busy thinking about you and your stupid voice and shamefully drove right past it.
‘It’s all right.’ I hear the click of his visor. He lets out an amused whistle. ‘I didn’t have you down as a loose cannon, Captain Lake.’ There’s a smile in his voice.
‘Didn’t have me down?’ I ask, clicking the kill switch to ‘off’. ‘How would you know?’
‘I’m just saying, from what I do know about you—’
‘Which isn’t a lot.’ It makes me bristle.
Adrenaline, perhaps, and the fact it’s what they do.
That false overfamiliarity. Dad used to do it.
Leave us, come back, feign ‘turning his life around’ but breath still tinged with sour alcohol.
He’d bring toys we no longer liked, sit with his arm around us in cafes, smiling at waitresses, all, ‘Ugh, yeah, hard work with these two,’ as if he hadn’t been AWOL for two Christmases.
The smiling along was exhausting. It’s why it was a relief his father, my grandfather, a kind but stiff factory owner, discreetly gifted us June House, and we disappeared to it.
An elaborate but bleak apology present on behalf of a son who baffled him.
I jump off the snowmobile. I want to run it off, or something; these thoughts of Dad, of Milo . . .
We’re parked outside The Bay, the main research centre here.
It sits large and authoritatively on the ice – a weird mix of shiny, corporate glass and angular lines, like a space-age greenhouse, and the older parts of the building in Scandi cladding.
It’s where the fire service operates from, the nurses, and also where we pick up important supplies that we don’t store at our smaller station. Flares, weapons . . .
I make my way to the entrance. I’m hoping to walk it off. That arm around my waist, the smile in his voice at my ear. Who does he think he is?
‘So, what’re we doing?’ he calls behind me, catching me up.
‘Walking.’
‘Ha. No, I mean, what is this place? Polly said supplies?’
‘I need to get a gun,’ I tell him. ‘From the store.’
‘Whoa, a gun? I thought that was a joke. So, we’re talking, like, an actual gun?’
‘Yes, Milo. A gun. That’s what a rifle is.’ I pause at the entrance, the first of two air-locked entryway doors, but I don’t elaborate any more.
Inside, I leave Milo in the carpeted reception area, gazing out of the large, square windows at the distant ocean, and pick up my rented rifle from the store. A grumpy man called Paulo hands it to me, says nothing. The red pen he asks me to sign the paperwork with keeps running out.
When I emerge, Milo is holding a tiny camera and tracing it in the air, as deftly as someone might burn and wave around sage.
At the sight of me, he stops filming – good – his feet still on the mud-brown carpet.
Music plays from behind the reception desk.
A German-speaking singer. A piano. Old silver tinsel left over from Christmas hangs over the reception computer monitor.
‘So. Is this when I get shot?’ Milo laughs, but I don’t. ‘I mean, we had a briefing on polar bears yesterday at the airport, but – I dunno, I just thought guns were a last resort or that this stuff doesn’t really happen, or . . .’
‘It rarely happens,’ I say, ‘but it does sometimes. Polar bears see us, and, well, they don’t want us here, frankly. This is their world. So, we have to be prepared. With guns. Especially when some of us are intent on goading them with fluorescent colours.’
‘I don’t want to kill no polar bear.’
‘No?’ I say, looping my arm through the gun’s strap and hoicking it onto my shoulder. ‘How noble of you,’ and I walk past him, to the exit.
‘Actual full-blown rifle,’ I hear him mutter to himself.
‘OK. Sure. Cool. Yup. Why not?’ Goody-goody Milo.
Mr Idealist with his faux warmth and ‘good prana’ and gratitude lists and ‘Who me? Date a normal woman? Grace her with my presence? Of course! It’s open season!
I’m a romantic! I’m nice! I would never kill a polar bear either!
I love animals! Cute shit!’ And cue roars of approval from the crowd . . .
Outside, we both stand by the snowmobile. I adjust the rifle, double-check the safety catch is on (it is) and pull out my walkie-talkie. I radio Polly a small update.
There’s silence as we stand next to each other, and I’m grateful for it.
I can ground myself, remind myself of my place here.
It’s my favourite kind of day here today.
Squinting bright. Miles of undisturbed snow ahead, like an enormous, clean rippled silk sheet.
Not a soul in sight. Chest freezer-cold.
It used to frighten me. The nothingness of it. Then it just became safety.
Today, though, with Milo here . . .
‘Waiting for them to radio back,’ I say.
Milo nods. ‘Allie . . . can we . . . I don’t know. Talk about earlier?’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ Why does he want to keep talking about this?
‘I disagree.’
I raise my eyebrows.
‘No, I just mean – I should’ve kept my head. Kept this professional. I promised myself I would. Regardless of . . . everything.’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Me too. At least we agree on that.’
‘And I don’t really want any of this clouding the doc. This is work. Like . . . this is Jameson’s dream.’
I sag a little with something inside. Relief. Work. I know what I’m doing with work. We can just keep this to work until it’s over and he’s gone. ‘Agreed. And me either.’
‘Cool.’
Even more silence now. A long, icy breath of wind. We stand here on the snow, nothing and nobody for miles, a clean, propless stage. Milo and me, under the spotlight of the polar sun. The radio in my hand is silent.
‘And I am sorry about your dad, Milo,’ I say. ‘Whatever happened. I’m sorry about it.’
‘Yeah.’ Milo brings his hands to his head, laces his fingers and cradles the back of his beanie hat. ‘Yeah, he stopped speaking to me.’
In spite of my anger, my heart sinks. ‘Completely?’
‘Yeah. Cut me out. Well. He actually picked up a call last week, so maybe we’re moving forward?
I dunno. But . . . he cut me off. Even my cheques?
’ He puffs out a dark laugh. ‘I guess he read the shit I said about him. He hates that kind of thing. He’s private.
Hates people knowing his business, you know?
So, he took the opportunity to go full Disappointed Father. ’
‘Gosh. I’m – sorry, Milo.’
‘Yeah . . .’