One Year Later
‘Look at that turnout. Seriously. Lay your eyes on that shit, baby.’ Jameson is beaming through the tinted windows of the taxi, hands in two arcs against the glass, face smooshed up against it.
The car crawls along the bustling London street, summer sun still beating down like theatre lights. ‘Like, this is all for us. All of it.’
‘All for our film, you mean,’ Iris says, smirking from beside him.
She adjusts the high collar of her jumpsuit.
My best friend looks amazing tonight. She scoured the whole of the UK for an outfit to wear, and eventually settled on this: a vintage seventies catsuit found in a charity bin that she spent weeks adjusting with needle and thread.
Classic Iris. Had never sewn before, but wanted to do it, so learned, immersed herself in YouTube tutorials, and therefore, did it.
‘Well, yeah obvs they’re here for the film, Iris,’ Jameson laughs.
‘But they’re here for us, too.’ He looks over at us, bows his head towards Milo and me.
‘And mostly to see these two. Our transatlantic sweethearts. What? That’s what the New Yorker called you, Allie, don’t be giving me sexy, cross looks like that. ’
I roll my eyes at him, and Milo chuckles from next to me, brings my hand to his warm lips and kisses.
‘Sexy, cross looks only for me,’ he says, the words against my skin, and I laugh, shoot him one too.
There are a lot of people out there. A lot, Jameson is right.
I can see them all on the street. Fans and photographers waiting excitedly behind metal barriers, and crawling along in cars like ours, in front, are guest after guest. Celebrities and scientists, dresses and suits making us all indistinguishable.
Tonight, we’re here for one thing: our short film.
Our documentary filmed in the Arctic, in Cote Rock, just over a year ago.
A demonstration of our important work over there, and mine and Milo’s reunion, a poignant B-story.
In places, it’s raw – me, talking about being hunted down by the public, feeling I had to escape.
Dad. Milo’s addiction and my phone getting in the hands of people it shouldn’t.
Helene, it turns out, the writer of Milo’s movie in Romania.
Journalist Laura-Lee admitted Helene had talked about it to her, that night.
She thought it would make a perfect companion piece to her love story of a movie they filmed in Romania.
No absolute proof meant we could never fully legally name her, and both Milo and I agreed we wouldn’t have wanted to. Not now.
Tonight, Two Birds, One Stone, will premiere, after twelve months of all of us editing and producing and philosophising and extracting the truth not only from our lives, but from what the world, via our amazing work in Svalbard, is trying to tell us, tell humanity.
Milo and I will also be stepping out onto the carpet – white, like snow, this time – for the very first time, at an official event, together.
A couple. Partners. Boyfriend and girlfriend.
We’ve taken that part slowly, although our relationship has been pretty public for a while now.
Milo’s speech, read by Jameson, went viral – of course – and it didn’t take internet sleuths long to ascertain he’d been in Svalbard, with me.
It’s different this time, though. We navigated it together.
Slowly. Carefully. And even when it feels scary – because it does sometimes, for us both – he’s right there.
I’m right there. We return only to each other; find each other in the noise.
My phone buzzes – a message from Polly.
‘Polly and Lars are there,’ I tell everyone, and then laugh. ‘Oh my God, Lars has spotted Helen Mirren.’
‘Oh, shit,’ laughs Milo.
‘Polly says she is so embarrassed, she’s tried to lose him twice.’
Polly sends through a photo of Lars posing on the white carpet.
I have a feeling Lars is going to have a lot of fans after tonight.
He looks gorgeous. Sunglasses and a tweed suit.
A rough, grey beard. Wild salt-and-pepper hair.
I smile so widely it stings my cheeks. It’s so special, having us all be a part of something like this.
That feather-blending of our lives and our worlds. And I’m happy. I’m so happy.
Milo laces his fingers through mine. ‘You all right, Captain Lake?’
‘I am,’ I nod. ‘And you, Officer Ford?’
‘I’m perfect,’ he says, leaning close to me. ‘So long as I’ve got you next to me, I’m perfect.’
‘Oh, barf, Mildred.’ Jameson grins from opposite us, still gazing out of the window, and Iris jabs him in the side.
‘Reminder you made a movie about them, Merritt,’ says Iris. ‘Mildred is allowed to be barf-y. We’re only here because he’s barf-y.’
‘Thank you, Iris,’ says Milo. ‘Plus, who knows, there might be a sequel soon, right? Might you have a bit of barfiness in you, J?’
Jameson swoops around and looks at him then, wide-eyed and grinning. ‘Stop with that.’
Iris giggles beside him. ‘I think he’s right,’ she says, putting her hand on Jameson’s knee.
‘I can sense you have a lot of barfiness in there.’ And Jameson smiles, places his own huge hand softly down on hers.
After eleven months of heavy flirting and sticking to the story of, ‘Oh, no way, we’re just like, really good friends,’ Jameson and Iris kissed on Jameson’s farm.
They’ve been on three dates so far and I have never seen Iris so happy.
He’s also going back to the arctic with her next spring.
He’s going to film a series of YouTube videos while there, and from the money we’ve raised through the movie, My Planet have no issue with him going back.
‘He can keep me company,’ Iris told me. ‘Since you’ll be knee-deep in wallpaper and gnomes and shit.’
Sian couldn’t get June House back, but she has just bought her own little place with her third of the money we got from its sale – a secluded Welsh stone cottage she’s going to turn into her own B&B and she is firmly ‘back on her bullshit’, as Milo says.
All Pinterest boards and wild plans and eBay taxidermy purchases.
June House is up for sale, though. We’ve not told her yet, but Milo and I organised a viewing tomorrow.
We’d talk to Sian first, of course, but Milo loved the idea of Mum’s retreat – for victims of addiction and abuse – and we’re hoping we can still do it.
A project of our own to return home to, between movies and Bermuda and our busy lives that throw us all over the world. An actor and a scientist.
The car comes to a complete stop. A security guard sidles up to the car door. It clicks open. The hubbub and chatter of crowds leak through the crack.
Milo presses his lips to the side of my face. ‘It’s just us two. No one else,’ he says. ‘Remember?’
‘Just us two,’ I repeat, a mantra of ours that has helped me – helped us – navigate this new world together over the last year.
And it has, so far, managed to feel like us two – whether we’re at Milo’s apartment, a slow morning of books and coffee and pyjamas, trading hopes and shadow-parts of ourselves and dinner plans, or here, in a car, the bright spotlight of the world eagerly waiting for us outside.
His hand always manages to find mine, and squeeze, and that’s all it takes.
The car door opens, cheers begin to slowly move through the crowds, and Milo begins to get out. ‘Hand?’ he says, looking back at me with a smile that turns my stomach over. I place my hand in his.
I don’t know what’s ahead for us. Not truly. Who does? Whether that’s Arctic cliffs or red carpets. New York apartments or miner’s cabins. I just know it’s our story now. It’s mine and Milo’s, and mine and Milo’s only.
As we step out of the car, Milo’s hand squeezes mine, and a sea of flashing cameras illuminates our path. If I close my eyes, it could be the world’s spotlight. It could be the polar sun.
*
[ Research Port // Saved by user: Milo Ford in folder: My Girl ] .
. . and in the case of ‘Lucky’ and ‘Mart’, Doctor Allie Lake concluded, that although the birds experienced some physical time apart, their organic reunion further demonstrates their bond had not been severed, that an interlude may have been required for growth and survival, and that the birds would ‘almost definitely’ ‘stay together for the rest of their lives’.
– Lake, Alexandra (2025, November 11) Monogamy in Seabirds, published in TLT Ecology Journal via My Planet.