The Split - Sharon Bolton Page 0,1

underwater camera. Conditions good.’

‘Take it easy,’ comes the reply from base. ‘No unnecessary risks.’

‘You ready, Flick?’

At her signal, Jack steps out and a blue wave swallows him up. Felicity follows and falls into a world of pain. Cold-water shock. She forces her breath in and out and waits for it to pass. When she is calm enough to open her eyes, she sees Jack taking hold of the underwater camera. She looks up, sees the depth sensor being lowered, and grasps it.

‘Time to get moving.’ Jack’s voice, rasping over the comms system, is unrecognizable.

They leave the surface and are consumed by a world of blue and white, in which the only sound is that of heavy, laboured breathing. Felicity and Jack follow the ice wall down, their headlights picking out fantastical shapes. Faces peer at them, animals from legend spring and coil in the ice crevasses.

The blue lake, which forms every spring from meltwater, has been steadily accumulating for five months now. Sometime in the next few weeks, possibly even today, the ice of the lake’s bed will fracture. The lake will drain, sending a hundred thousand cubic metres of meltwater through an intricate, hidden drainage system until it reaches bedrock. From there, it will flow out into the southern Atlantic ocean. The release of so much water might be the trigger that forces the ice to break apart, to send another massive iceberg tumbling into the sea. Blue lakes, it is believed, play a crucial part in the movement of glaciers and the creation of bergs.

The alarm sounds on Felicity’s depth gauge. She and Jack have reached the flat shelf of ice that will hold both the camera and depth sensor to measure movement in the lake over the next week. She hovers in the water, and takes her time fixing the instruments in position.

‘I’m switching on, Alan,’ she says.

‘Hold on. Yeah, we’ve got it. Looking good, Flick. What’s it like down there?’

Jack, she sees, is some way below, his suit ghostly pale against the blue depths.

‘Not sure I’ve the words,’ she tells Alan.

Jack is coming back. He swims fast, as much at home in the water as the millions of seals that live around South Georgia.

‘What do you think?’ he says, as he draws level. ‘You up for it?’

It is her idea. It, though, seems a very different proposition now that she is in the heart of the lake. It could be very dangerous.

On the other hand, there are worse places to die.

‘What’s up, guys?’ Alan’s voice crackles at them from the surface.

‘We’re thinking of having a quick look for the plug hole.’ Jack holds eye contact, waiting for her answer.

The plug hole is a theory, completely unproven, that, at the deepest part of the lake’s bed, a weak spot of ice lies directly above a central drain.

There is a hiss of static in her ear and Alan says, ‘I don’t know, Jack. It’s clouding over up here.’

Weather changes so quickly in South Georgia, even in summer.

‘Your call, Flick,’ says Jack.

If she dies today, it’s over. No more running. No more hiding.

Felicity puts a finger to her lips. She feels, rather than sees Jack’s smile and then she flips.

‘Guys, what’s going on?’ Alan’s voice is breaking up.

Directly below, Felicity sees the ice forming a conical shape.

‘Reckon that’s it?’ Jack asks.

‘Guys, we’ve got movement on the surface. Air bubbles that aren’t coming from you two.’

Felicity and Jack stop swimming and look at each other. Other bubbles could be caused by movement on the lakebed. Were it to fracture now, draining the water, the two of them would be sucked into the glacier. They would die in an icy grave or be swept out into the Atlantic.

They hear Alan’s voice again. ‘Doc says I’ve to pull you up. Ten seconds, then we’re winding you in.’

Felicity reaches behind and unhooks her safety line. She feels Jack’s hand brush her ankle as he tries to catch her and misses. Her head begins to throb as she swims lower and it might be her imagination, but breathing seems to be getting harder. She focuses only on the dark blue cone at the lake’s inner core, hears crackling on the radio and thinks she can make out Jack asking for a few more minutes.

When she is only a few feet above the blue circle she pulls a small plastic bottle from the pouch around her waist. As she loosens the top, a crimson liquid bursts out like a fleeing genie. It hangs in the