The Split - Sharon Bolton Page 0,6

and vitamins. They wolf it down. It’s really not hard. And I’ve left the recipe in case I’m delayed.’ She takes a step towards the door. ‘Thanks, Jack, I really appreciate it.’

Bolder now, Jack runs his hand over the soft brown feathers of Anna’s head. He doesn’t see her glance at the wall clock.

‘You are nuts,’ he says.

He means her, not the penguin baby. His eyes move, once again, to the stuff on the bed.

‘How long will you be up at Bird?’ he asks.

‘Couple of days,’ she tells him. ‘Maybe three.’

Three days and the ship will sail away again, taking with it all its passengers. Three days and this will be over. She might not have to go at all. If the passenger list shows up in the next few hours, if the name she’s looking for isn’t on it, that’s it. She can get drunk tonight and wake up tomorrow with a raging hangover, knowing she’s safe.

Jack asks, ‘What if the lake drains?’

‘I’ll keep an eye on the levels. I doubt it will be in the next week.’

As she reaches for the door handle to speed his departure, she can see that Jack is about to argue with her, tell her there is every chance the lake will drain in the next few days. He’s right. The event she’s waited for the whole of her seven months here could happen in the next day or so and she might miss it.

She might miss more than the lake draining.

‘Once they can fend for themselves, these two need to go back to their colony at Right Whale Bay.’ She steps away from the door and back towards him as she speaks. ‘Will you do it? If I can’t be here, will you make sure they’re OK?’

Jack is silent for several seconds. ‘What’s going on?’ he asks at last.

Felicity tries to turn away but he catches hold of her arm.

‘You’ve been jumpy for weeks,’ he says. ‘Especially when a cruise ship is due. This stuff’ – he gestures at the bed – ‘there’s no way you’ll need that on Bird Island. And now you’re talking as though you won’t come back. Seriously, Flick, what the fuck?’

And now she must lie to her best friend.

‘Of course, I’ll come back,’ she says. ‘But you know what the weather’s like. If I get delayed, I need to know someone will be watching out for these guys.’

Jack doesn’t reply immediately and she walks to the door again. Still, he doesn’t follow.

‘What did you make of that lot from the Southern Star today?’ he asks. ‘That story about the knife-wielding madwoman?’

For a moment, she can’t think what he’s talking about. Then she remembers, the group of tourists in Nigel’s office.

‘I figured they’d all had a lot to drink.’ She is thinking out loud, the visitors’ complaint had barely registered in her over-anxious brain. ‘The husband had been enjoying a bit of extra-maritals and when he was almost discovered, he invented a story about being attacked to deflect his wife’s wrath.’

Jack’s smile fades. ‘The trouble is, someone has been seen wandering around the whaling station at night. Before the Southern Star came into dock.’

Felicity hasn’t heard this before. ‘Who’d do that?’ she says. ‘It’s not safe.’

‘Even so, three people I know have seen movement down there.’

‘It’ll be a seal. A large bird.’

‘Seals tend not to light fires.’

In spite of everything, Felicity is intrigued. ‘You’re talking about someone living here alone, finding shelter, keeping themselves warm, catching enough food to survive. It simply isn’t possible.’

‘You wouldn’t think so, would you?’

5

Bamber

During the day, Grytviken is a ghost town; at night, the ghosts rise up and walk its streets again. At its commercial height, over a thousand men lived and worked here and each one left something of himself behind. Now, their footsteps echo along the dirt tracks and they call to each other across the water. They bang flensing tools against the rusting towers of the oil tanks and swear at the wind as it hurries them along the abandoned streets.

They are still here, the whalers, and Bamber is getting to know each of them.

They are black from the smoke of coal fires, these men of the sea, their clothes gore-stained, hands greasy with animal fat. They are tough, cruel, unforgiving in life, and death has not improved them. They avoid the church and the cemetery; both are reminders of the fate they’ve not escaped. They linger instead where life and death mingled on a daily basis. They’ve shed blood,