Sun at Midnight. Rosie Thomas

      Shoesmith was a famous name, but not by reason of Richard’s own achievements. He was a palaeontologist. He had completed his PhD at Cardiff, had done post-doctoral work at the University of Texas, held a research post at Warwick and was currently Reader in Palaeontology there. She had pulled out some of his papers and read them attentively. He had done some new work on evolution and extinction of certain cephalopods and gastropods at the end of the Cretaceous, but he didn’t have a big reputation in his field.

      His grandfather, however, was Gregory Shoesmith.

      As a twenty-two-year-old alpinist, poet and gentleman botanist, Gregory had been one of the youngest members of Scott’s Terra Nova expedition. As an explorer he had acquitted himself with quiet bravery and dignity, and Mount Shoesmith, the majestic peak overlooking the Beardmore Glacier, was named after him. But it was for his poem, ‘Remember This, When I Am Best Forgotten’, that he was famous. For every schoolchild of the last century it was the epitaph for the heroic age of polar exploration.

      Gregory came home from the ice with what was left of Scott’s expedition and had almost immediately enlisted. He survived the entire war and was awarded the VC. He was widowed while he was still a young man, then married again in his forties. His second wife had three children and the youngest of these, a career soldier, was Richard Shoesmith’s father. As the child of a services family Richard had seen his father’s postings all over the world, but mostly he had grown up in English boarding schools.

      This much Alice knew as fact. She also knew by intuition that she and Richard Shoesmith suffered in common the sun and shadow effect of their family reputations. For Lewis Sullavan it made perfect sense to have Gregory Shoesmith’s grandson leading his first expedition, just as it would to have Margaret Mather’s daughter amongst the scientists. Who you are, as Richard put it, provided them both with enviable opportunities. And the two of them had always to live without the certainty that what they did achieve was on their own merits.

      Richard put down the belemnite stone but his fingers still rested on it, as if for reassurance. He considered for a moment, then seemed to reach a decision. ‘Are you free to travel south at this short notice? Most of the members will be at Kandahar by the middle of October.’

      A little more than two weeks’ time.

      Alice thought quickly. ‘My mother has been very ill recently, but she’s recovering. She would be there herself if it were possible and because it isn’t she very much wants me to go in her place. Apart from my parents, I don’t have any other ties. I could be at Kandahar in a month’s time, if that would be acceptable.’

      A silence fell. With his head turned to the city view of towers and cranes, and his fingers minutely caressing the stone, Richard was thinking. On the wall behind him was a framed aerial photograph of a slice of Antarctic coastline. It was a black-and-white image in which the sea was inky black and the mainland mountain peaks stood out in stark whiteness, ribbed with shadows almost as black and deep as the waters. In the fretted indentations of U-shaped bays, ice showed up in milky swirls as diaphanous as torn muslin. At such a distance the treacherous glaciers looked as innocuous as wrinkled skin on some great cooling and congealing milk pudding. Somewhere, on that peninsular margin between black water and white ice, lay Kandahar Station.

      ‘As I told you, Lewis is strongly in favour of your joining us. And I would be happy to accede to that.’

      She thought that this cool assurance was the last word, but then he surprised her.

      ‘I love Antarctica with all my heart. I’ve always loved it, first the idea and then the reality. It’s the only place, the only thing I have ever known that is always more beautiful than its admirers can convey, more seductive and more dangerous than its reputation allows. You can never forget it, and it never releases its hold on you. I hope that it will come to be just as important to you.’

      ‘I hope so too,’ Alice said. And then she smiled. It was her wide, infrequent and startlingly brilliant smile. ‘Thank you.’

      Richard coughed and turned his attention to a separate set of papers on his tidy desk. ‘However, there are a number of things you will need to do before you can definitely join us. Medical and dental check-ups, and so forth. Beverley Winston will arrange for you to be kitted out with polar gear. Everything is supplied, with the Sullavan Company logo as well as the EU flag. You will also have to do some basic survival training. The British Antarctic Survey people have kindly agreed to provide that for our UK members, in the spirit of European unity and cooperation.’ He smiled drily.

      ‘At such short notice you may not have the opportunity to meet the other members of the expedition together, or even individually, before we all reach Kandahar. We’re a farflung group, geographically speaking. Which is part of the idea, of course – not to gather a little coterie of chums who were all at Cambridge together.’

      Richard Shoesmith didn’t belong to any such coterie, Alice understood. Nor did Lewis Sullavan.

      ‘We shall be a full-season core of just ten people in all. Six scientists, including yourself, and four support staff.’

      She read the list of names that he passed across the desk to her.

      Eight people she didn’t yet know, with whom she would spend five months in a hut perched on the white margin at the distant end of the earth. Outside, in London, toy boats were plying their way up and down the river, and taxis were being hailed to take businessmen to lunch.

      ‘Six nationalities,’ Richard said. ‘Seven, if you count Welsh. This is not a huge Antarctic research station like McMurdo or even Rothera. We shall be pioneers on an old base and we’ll set out with no rules except safety regulations. We are there to help one another and to cooperate in everything from science to international understanding to cleaning the base kitchen. If there is a job that needs to be done, any job whatsoever, you will be expected to help out with it.’

      A slow flush darkened Richard’s already ruddy cheeks. He was moved by the thought of this, of their tightly knit and multinational group working together outside the common conventions, and Alice found that she was touched in response.

      ‘You know your polar history? Of course you do. You know that Amundsen’s bid for the Pole was for Norway’s sake. It was a matter of national ambition and pride. Whereas Scott wanted the Pole, of course, but the real reason for his expeditions, the ideal that he and his team all fought and risked their lives for, was scientific exploration and discovery. We shall also be there for science’s sake.’

      She understood that Richard Shoesmith was a scientist through and through. He would be a meticulous, painstaking investigator but he almost certainly wouldn’t write poetry passionate enough to inspire two generations, as his gentleman-botanist grandfather had done. Alice’s sympathy and liking for him grew.

      ‘Yes,’ she said.

      The meeting was drawing to a close. They talked for a few more minutes about the practicalities of preparation and travel, then Alice stood up and Richard walked with her to the door. They were shaking hands when he said, ‘Are you free for lunch?’

      It was twenty minutes past twelve and she had arranged to meet Becky at one o’clock in a bar in Clerkenwell. ‘I’m sorry. I’m on my way to see a friend.’

      He didn’t have to ask her to lunch, it wasn’t a part of the vetting process. He was asking because he wanted to. They recognised each other. She smiled at him again.

      ‘Of course. Well, then, good luck with your medicals and so forth. We’ll speak.’

      ‘Yes. Thank you for asking me to join the expedition. I’m looking forward to it.’

      As their eyes met for the last time they acknowledged this for a comical understatement.

      Alice sailed down in the bubble lift, crossed the grandiose foyer and walked out into the cloudy morning. There was the smell of river and the dampness of autumn in the air. The faces of people walking towards her had acquired extra definition, she could read the words on the sides of buses crawling over Blackfriars Bridge. All her