Chapter Twenty-Two
Allie
The hike back passes quickly. It’s raining again now, but the temperature has risen a little, and the winds have let up.
My ankle feels a lot better, too, and the puffins are all doing so well, it’s left me feeling buoyant and hopeful.
So very many things happen out here that fill me with nothing but dread for the future.
Melting ice, collapsing before our eyes, landing like meteors into the sea.
Birds who don’t breed. Finding birds we’ve tracked from chicks, washed up, wings tangled in plastic – but days like today make me feel as though it’s working.
That the world is not so bad, so long as we keep giving it what it needs, and adding only good.
That there’s still so much beauty, still so much hope.
And after last night, I needed the distraction of today.
Because since last night, I don’t know how to act.
I don’t know what to do. Was the kissing a mistake?
It makes perfect, logical sense that it absolutely was a mistake, and so I’m attempting to act accordingly.
Because, logically, it was silly to kiss Milo (a lot) and I shouldn’t have asked him to.
We should never have stayed in that cabin.
He should not have bathed my foot, touched his lips to my bare knee.
Because mere days ago, I was sure Milo was the man who betrayed me and upended my life.
Now I’m sure he isn’t, and that something else – someone else – did.
Which means we can pick up where we left off, counting down the minutes to each other.
And I can hardly imagine what that might look like.
Me, here, with birds, off-grid. Him, in New York, in LA, under the world’s spotlight . . .
But something totally illogical is that it doesn’t feel like a mistake.
Kissing Milo doesn’t feel silly, not at all.
In fact, Milo’s mouth on mine – I shiver every time I think about it – felt like everything.
Like nothing I had ever experienced, and yet, the most right thing.
The heat of him against me. His strong, safe hand grasping my behind, pulling me into him.
So, of course, I woke up in the cabin, terrified.
And thank God, fieldwork was there, waiting for me as it always is.
A safe constant. So, I threw myself into it like it was a swimming pool on a hot day.
Tomorrow, it’ll be time to head back to the station, and I’ve decided everything will feel clearer then.
Getting back, having dinner and going over research, a long hot shower, my own bed .
. . Except, Milo will be leaving. And as much as I try to tell myself it’ll all be OK, that I can scooch back to normality, as it was just a few days ago, I know it can’t.
Not now. But I don’t even know what that means . . .
The rain is getting heavier and after days of fieldwork, wet clothes and no bathrooms, everyone is exhausted and has taken to their tents.
There’s nothing much to do in weather like this.
Polly is napping and, last I saw, Jameson and Milo were sharing AirPods and looking over some of the footage.
And me, I’m staring at the bowing ceiling of the tent, going over, once more, a mental checklist of everything I need to do before going back tomorrow.
Iris edges closer to me. She’s bundled up in layers – a fleece, coat, Milo’s hat (he’s given it to her) – and she’s listening to an audiobook about near-death experiences.
Rain hammers on the roof. Polly snoozes beside us.
‘So,’ whispers Iris, pulling out her earphone. ‘Are you ready yet now Polls is asleep?’
‘Mm?’
‘About the last twenty-four hours,’ she whispers with a grin. ‘I hope you know that you’re not going to get away with not telling me everything. What happened?’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, even though I know it’s utterly pointless to try to pretend. This is Iris. Iris knows everything about me. Even when I like to pretend she doesn’t.
‘Oh please, amigo.’ We’re twisted towards each other like two children at a sleepover. ‘Don’t start that shit with me.’
‘I’m not.’ I groan and pull my sleeping bag higher over my head.
‘Allie.’
‘I’m tired,’ I say.
‘We’re all tired.’
I hide beneath the shiny, noisy material.
‘Something happened, didn’t it?’ she presses. Then she leans in and squeaks with excitement beside me, into my ear.
‘Maybe.’
‘I swear when that man radioed me again, worrying himself sick about your ankle, I was sold. You were asleep and he was harping on about fires and making you dinner—’
‘He was not worrying himself sick,’ I say from beneath the sleeping bag.
‘He was. And do you know what he said? When he radioed later?’
I pull the cover down and stare at her. Rain sprays against the tarp, like a garden sprinkler. ‘What did he say?’ Because of course I want to know. Because, yes, I’m terrified, but all I want is for him to kiss me again. He feels right. Milo feels right.
Iris smiles, leans in and whispers, ‘He said, hey, yeah, my girl’s taking a nap.’
‘My girl?’ I say.
‘My girl.’ Iris beams. ‘He absolutely said my girl.’
‘Oh, God.’
Everything rushes beneath my skin. Excitement. A static warm surge of it like I’ve been injected with something. And then fear. Hot, panicky fear that sounds like a panicked ‘no no no’ in my mind. And then a big what if? scuds in like a cloud of hope, sagging with what-could-bes.
‘He is clearly falling in love with you, Allie,’ whispers Iris.
‘Don’t be silly—’
‘What?’
I pause. ‘Is he?’
‘Are you?’
Then, beside me, Polly clears her throat. Polly’s known for things like this: to be partial to slight theatrics. ‘Are we talking about Allo Lord?’ Polly shrugs from within her sleeping bag.
From the next tent, Lars starts laughing at something unseen. ‘Yeah!’ he’s saying. ‘I know, right?’ It reminds me how close we all are, and I hold a finger to my lips.
‘Sorry, darling,’ Polly whispers. ‘But I’m awake now and I’ve yet to obtain the ability to turn my ears off, so.’
‘Allo Lord?’ I ask.
‘Yours and Milo’s ship name,’ says Iris with a laugh a little too loud for a flimsy, non-sound-proofed tent. ‘Polly didn’t know what a ship name was, so I schooled her and she came up with it. Pretty fast actually. The perfect blend of Allie Lake and Milo Ford, if you ask me.’
‘Allo Lord is awful!’ I whisper. ‘It sounds like a . . . bad eighties sitcom or something.’
‘I said this, but it’s grown on me, you know.’ Iris smiles at me, excitable and girlish, a sparkle in her eye. ‘Plus, it’s her first attempt. I think it should be celebrated.’
Despite myself, I laugh too. A touch of hysteria and giddiness, caused by tiredness. ‘Some people – online people – say Mallie.’
‘Nah,’ says Polly simply.
‘Since when has it been Allo Lord?’ I ask, now trying to stifle the laughs desperate to burst out of me.
If we were back at the research station, we’d all be guffawing and barking with laughter, packets of Maltesers open on the coffee table in the common room, legs folded beneath us, blankets shared.
It’s difficult trying to keep so quiet in what’s essentially a cloth-built room.
‘Since the boat moment,’ Polly replies. ‘When you had to go on the dinghy together to get the gear? Well. I noticed something might be off. Iris and I had a secret chat after the human knot.’
‘Iris told me off when I got back to the tent after the human knot,’ I remind her.
‘She told me what had happened between you both.’ Polly grins. ‘I couldn’t believe it was him. The guy. But then, crikey, did it make sense. All the sexual tension I couldn’t get my noggin around.’
‘There was no sexual tension,’ is all I say and Polly says, as bluntly as if she was discussing funding applications, ‘Yes there was.’
‘There was none.’
‘Oh fuck off,’ says Iris and she says this in the most un-whispered voice I’ve ever encountered when in a tent with material for walls.
‘Iris!’
‘Sorry, sorry.’ She clears her throat. ‘That’s just how strongly I feel about it.’
We glance at each other, three heads of wild hair and weather-beaten skin poking out of sleeping bags in a row. ‘We have to remember this is a tent, not an actual brick wall. He could be listening.’
‘Oh, he’ll be asleep,’ says Polly.
I shake my head. ‘He doesn’t sleep remember. He’s a bit of an insomniac. He struggles with it.’
Iris makes a downward arc with her mouth. ‘Is that so? And did he sleep last night? Because I’m pretty sure he said he slept like a log when he got back today.’
I feel my cheeks burn. ‘Yeah, he, erm, did. I woke a few times and he was fast asleep. Beside me. Like on the next bed, I mean, a separate bed.’
‘Disappointed about the separate bed deal,’ mutters Iris.
Polly smiles, hair windswept and frizzy around her temples. ‘He probably slept because he was with you.’
‘We kissed,’ I whisper. ‘We kissed and it was amazing,’ and beside me, Iris sinks into her sleeping bag, and Polly mouths, ‘Yes!!!!’ two fists coming up to punch the air.
‘Dying,’ Iris utters from within the sleeping bag. ‘Actually dying.’ And I so want to just envelop myself in it. All this excitement. All this hope. But . . . gah.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I groan.
Iris snuggles closer. ‘Oh, mate, what don’t you know?’
I stare at the pitched roof of the tent. It billows a little, with the cold spring breeze.
‘I don’t know any of it,’ I whisper. ‘Let’s just say we somehow . . . move forward. Ignore all the awful stuff that happened. Forget it. How it would even work? And I feel like I still want answers, about how it happened . . .’
‘I knew you felt something,’ says Iris, distractedly. ‘I just knew it. And he’s clearly a goner. The man’s eyes are all moon.’
I close my eyes. I feel like I’m inches from the top of a ladder. I’m scared to climb back down, but scared to take the final step up. ‘But it could never work. Me? Hollywood? I don’t even like a headshot being on the university’s website.’
‘You’d find a way,’ says Polly. ‘And what’s the alternative, Allie? To live a life not worth watching?’