Chapter Fourteen
Allie
Milo and I are not talking.
We tried.
We really tried.
But it seems to always ends up the same.
And ever since our latest conversation came to its dramatic close – since I fired a flare into the sky to frighten off a polar bear that turned out to be, in my stress and hypervigilance, a distant weirdly shaped mound of snow – it’s safe to say, things have been pretty awful between us.
The atmosphere so thick, it is basically slime.
Just moments ago, Jameson and Iris decided to turn back to camp with samples they’d collected, and it was time to check in on my auks. And Milo, no longer speaking to me, has no choice but to come with me.
First, because, as demonstrated, we must travel in pairs. (See: near bear miss.)
Second, because neither of us particularly wants to show the rest of the team we’re arguing.
Even if Iris and Jameson would be unsurprised if we were back to being bickering enemies, Polly and Lars don’t appear to have a clue about anything that’s ever happened between us, so, it’s a stand-off, I suppose you’d call it.
Of who can look the most normal and the most professional and the most grown-up.
And all while we begin to slowly ascend the cliff, heading for a closer look at my little auks, who are oblivious to the fact that drama has arrived on their little islet.
We came. We swore. We accused. And then I fired a flare to stop us all getting killed (although I’m sure Milo thinks it was a dramatic way to stop the conversation entirely, and maybe it was, but only in a very subconscious way).
Now we crunch across the slippery melting terrain together, mutedly. The wind has picked up a little, oohing like a distant choir, but everything else is so silent, I can hear my own pulse. Milo is doing everything he can to avoid looking at me.
Good. Good. The feeling is mutual. Very mutual. I can’t wait for these days with him to be over. How dare he compare his endless interviews and memes to my singular podcast episode that was meant to be about puffins?
‘It gets a bit tighter up here,’ I say instead, keeping things professional.
We stop.
I glance up the side of the cliff. ‘There’s a vague path,’ I say, turning back to him. ‘So, it’s fine. It’s just steep for a little while.’
‘You sure you don’t just need some balls?’ he asks, humourlessly, but his voice wobbles, his lips pale.
‘Milo, are you OK?’
‘Dandy.’
I ignore him.
‘Are you . . .’ I start but stop myself. ‘I’d say you don’t have to come with me but—’
‘But you have the gun. I know.’
‘Yes. I have the gun.’ I stand back, look up at the cliff, assess.
‘And you’d rather I didn’t die by bear attack, right?’ he asks.
‘I’m concentrating.’
‘Because if you’re ambivalent, just say. I’ll wait here. Take my chances.’
I sigh again. I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up with leaving the silences silent for long. He just can’t help himself. His brain is like an overflow car park.
‘Right.’ I slip off my backpack. I fish out a paracord I packed to tie down equipment. ‘Let’s try something. I might have something that helps . . . those who prefer being on the ground . . .’
‘You mean, those with a fear of heights?’
‘Yes.’ And I feel slightly guilty now, about the impatience (and the balls comment). I hadn’t realised he was really afraid.
He sighs, eyes closing, deflating with a huff of ‘fuck’ under his breath. ‘I’m chicken shit, right? That’s what you’re thinking.’
I steady myself on the cliffside, slip my bag back on my back, the cord in my hand. ‘Nope. I think you’re normal.’
‘Bold statement.’
‘From an evolutionary standpoint,’ I explain. ‘Acrophobia means you’d have been most likely to survive way back when.’
Milo’s eyebrows knit together. His wavy brown hair is wild today with the sea air.
Perfectly messily tangled and twisted. It’s annoying how handsome he is.
And it’s annoying how much I notice, too, even though I feel I shouldn’t.
Although, that moment on the cliff – the ‘I didn’t’.
I keep thinking about it. Because right then, I really think I did believe him.
And if I did, what does that even mean now for us?
That there’s another person out there who did this?
‘So, what, I’d have been a smart caveman?’ snorts Milo.
‘Yes,’ I tell him, holding out one end of the cord. ‘Anyway. We’ll hold this. It’s a paracord. Walking together, holding onto something like this, me in front, helps with balance—’
‘I have balance.’
‘It’ll make you feel safer, though,’ I tell him. ‘It’ll give you stability.’
‘I have stability,’ he says. ‘I had to climb, like, ten ladders in my last job—’
‘Milo.’ I stop wrapping the cord around my hand. ‘Just – be a good caveman and take the cord. OK?’
He says nothing and just follows me, all cocky, I’ve-got-better-places-to-be attitude.
He is as good as stomping up the steep path behind me . . .
‘Shit!’ Milo growls.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I just . . . slipped,’ he grunts. ‘I’m fine.’
‘The ground is looser up here, but we’re almost there. Just go slowly—’
‘I am.’
‘You’re stomping like a toddler.’ My muttered words are lost on the wind.
‘What did you just say?’
‘Just – be more careful,’ I say, and he does nothing more than huff.
We carry on walking, steadily, carefully, both of our hands holding the purple cord, tight and taut. I hear him sigh heavily behind me, like I’m pulling him up a cliff to a mountain-jail.
I’ve been counting down the weeks to this, to checking in on my colonies, filling the well in my chest with good, and now, I have a sulker behind me—
‘God!’
From beneath my foot, scree and pebbles shift and cascade and it’s my turn now. I slip backwards. Pointlessly, I grip onto the cord. A strangled, pathetic yelp bursts out of me. I shoot out a hand to steady myself on the rock, but . . .
Milo is there.
Right behind me.
Grabs me.
Solid.
I’m pressed against him, and through the padding of our coats, I can still feel his chest hard and strong against my shoulder blades.
His arms cocoon me, like a bear hug. We stand still, against each other, on the narrow cliff path.
Our chests rise and fall in unison. You slip a lot out here – it’s inevitable.
But for a second, this time, I don’t want to move.
‘You all right?’ he asks, breathlessly. He’s so close, mouth against my ear.
Warm breath tickles my cheek. And . . . We just stay there, pressed against each other, his face next to mine, mere inches away, his body enveloping mine.
Waves roar in the distance. Wind blows around us.
Stones skitter, skydiving down to the ground.
Something churns in me. Familiarity. A warm shiver . . .
I nod. ‘Yes. I . . . I slipped too.’
‘No shit.’
I reach a hand out to the damp rock, pull myself to steadiness.
Milo doesn’t move behind me. I can smell him.
He smells like salt. He smells like whatever deep, spiced deodorant spray he used this morning.
His wobbliness – his caveman fear – seems to have disappeared.
And I suddenly want to say too much. Sometimes everything that happened boils and boils down until it is just one thing: Why did you take the trust I tentatively held in my hands and hurl it against a brick wall?
If not the leak itself, then everything else.
Why did the world come before me? Before us?
But then, is it actually true that he didn’t do anything at all?
I tentatively ease myself out of Milo’s hold and start walking again. Moments later, we reach where we need to get to. It’s safer up here. More flat ground, more space.
Little auks are scattered everywhere on this cliffside.
It always makes me smile to see them. Fluffy in their beautiful breeding plumage.
Rows and rows of them, matching white chests and black feathery heads, like tiny birds wearing tiny white tabards.
Some have little orange coils on their legs from last year’s tagging.
‘Hey, guys. How are we?’ I beam. ‘Ah. So many of you!’
Milo watches me, says nothing.
A group take flight at the sight of us, then slowly, tentatively, resettle.
Sometimes I wonder whether they recognise me.
The multiple pecking scars on my hand tell me probably not.
Or, if they do, I’m more the strange village idiot they see about sometimes.
Harmless, weird, but all bets are off if she tries to touch you.
And I get it. I’d be the same if I was an auk and a woman kept showing up to put meaningless anklets on me.
‘I’m just going to check these burrows,’ I tell Milo, who nods, sits down slowly, rests his forearms on his bent knees.
I find one – a crevice in the cliffside.
I once told Iris checking burrows was my very own advent calendar.
Instead of chocolate, you look for bird eggs, or, even more exciting: little fluffy babies.
Signs of hope, instead of chocolate. She’d held my face then, and said, ‘Oh, mate. If nobody else marries you, I will simply have to.’
‘You have to be quiet here,’ I tell Milo.
‘I am quiet,’ he replies. ‘Or is it that I’m breathing too loudly?’
He’s still sulking a little, despite our moment on the cliff. He’s in full-blown Yeah-I-caught-you-and-everything-but-I’d-still-rather-be-anywhere-else mode. It does not surprise me that Milo Ford sulks. I would’ve laid money on him being a sulker. Of course he’s a sulker.
I bend, looking into the pokey burrow of the nest. It’s murky and deep. So much so, it seems . . . black. I need to get closer.
‘Here,’ I say, taking out my field pack. Dictaphone, infrared camera, scales. I hand Milo my bag. ‘Could you just hold this?’
‘Sure.’ He takes it, but I sense a sigh being held back. ‘What’re we doing here?’
I bend and get closer to the burrow. ‘Checking in on the breeding pairs.’
‘And how do you know who’s who?’