boots to help them grip the ice. They scaled mountains, stumbled down shale fields and fought their way out of snow drifts. Crossing glaciers riddled with crevasses they knew that each step they took on virgin snow could be their last. They walked and climbed without a break for thirty-six hours before reaching Stromness and safety.
A little over a hundred years later, nothing in that barren landscape has changed. The two advantages Freddie has over Shackleton and his crew are that he is travelling in summer and doesn’t have quite so far to go.
Felicity isn’t heading for Bird Island, he is sure of that now. She would never have left such an obvious trail. There is only one other place she can be.
He wonders, if she has been planning to hide from him for as long as he has been planning to find her. It was a mistake, sending that letter, warning her of his plans, but how could he have known she’d become so fucking unreasonable?
He leaves Cumberland Bay trekking north-west, up a path that is little more than an indentation in the grass. Weighed down by kit, he nevertheless is over the first rise and out of sight of Grytviken by noon. He pauses on the brink of the hill to train his binoculars on King Edward Point and thinks he can see people at the wharf. As he watches, a launch with several passengers on board pulls away and heads north.
From this point on, he is forced to leave the path behind and hiking over tussock grass slows him further. After another hour he stops to rest and by two o’clock he is descending the steep shale slope into Cumberland West Bay.
This side of the bay differs substantially to its eastern counterpart. Three glaciers finish their journeys here and even in summer, their icy feed has a constantly chilling impact upon the water and its surrounds. Small icebergs, known as bergy bits, litter the water.
Freddie has a decision to make. Hiking around the bay will involve climbing and crossing the mouths of three glaciers. There is no way he can do that before nightfall, and he might not survive a night on a glacier. The bay, on the other hand, is only two miles across.
The canoe inflates in fifteen minutes. It takes him five more to assemble the paddle and transfer his life jacket to the outside of his coat. From the waterline along the shale beach, he knows the tide is high and that its pull will be at its weakest. The bergs are moving slowly close to shore, sometimes hardly at all, suggesting little or no current. Only when they reach a mile or so out, do they pick up speed. If he stays close to land, he should be able to avoid being sucked out to sea.
He pushes off. Immediately, the cold seems to wrap itself around him. The bergs radiate frigid air, and the wind sweeping down over the glaciers chills his bones. He paddles hard and seems to make no headway. He hadn’t realised, from the shore, how strong the wind is. Keeping an eye out for bergs floating too close, or over-curious seals, he tucks his head down and paddles for his life.
16
Felicity
Felisssitee.
That voice again. And footsteps coming down the stairs. She can hear them, thumping above her head, each one slightly different in tone as though the stairs are a musical instrument and he is playing a scale.
Three, two, one. Coming ready or not.
The last step creaks. From there it is six strides to the cupboard door. She always counts the strides. She can’t help herself.
The door opens, she starts awake, and remembers.
She is in Husvik.
She remembers nearly being bitten a second time by the huge seal but managing to slip past it and run until it stopped chasing her. She remembers hiding her stuff and then limping towards the shelter of the manager’s villa.
There are two bedrooms in the villa and her sleeping bag is unrolled on a bunk not two feet away from where she is huddled in the corner. It is unzipped, so she must have been in it at some point.
She is shivering and yet her clothes are damp with sweat. The wound on her leg where the elephant seal bit her feels hot and sore in spite of the paracetamol she took earlier. How much earlier? The room is entirely dark. She glances at her watch. Nearly two hours have passed while she’s been sleeping.