The Split

by Sharon Bolton

  The room beyond is neat, with the functional simplicity of a college student’s room. The watercolour prints of seabirds look mass produced, and the colour scheme is the bland cream and blue of a budget hotel. The narrow bed is as neatly made as one in a hospital, there are no clothes lying over the armchair nor shoes behind the door.

  A high-pitched chirruping catches his attention. He had forgotten the incubator on the desk. He steps over and peers inside to see two fat, brown feathered creatures with long, thin beaks looking back at him. Penguins, he thinks, although he has no clue which species.

  The faint smell of something floral is released as he opens the wardrobe. A row of shelves holds her sweaters, T-shirts and underwear. Trousers, a spare coat and a single dress are hanging up. He steps closer, pressing his face against fabric, breathing in her scent. The clothes are simple and functional, designed for comfort and warmth. And yet, if the photograph is recent, she is still the lovely young woman he dreamed of, night after night in his prison cell.

  The trinket box is made of white bone china, oval in shape, with a circle of violets on the lid and, for a moment, Freddie is lost. Once, he saw that box every morning when he woke. The lid feels cool and delicate under his fingers. Inside are hair grips, a couple of pairs of stud earrings, a silver lily on a chain and a wedding ring.

  He feels tears rising, his throat tightening. He bought this ring himself, when he couldn’t imagine not being in love, not looking forward to the future with anything other than joy. He’d thought that man was dead and buried, and now he finds he was here all the time, just waiting to be woken.

  Unable to help himself, he slips the ring into his jacket pocket. He bought the silver lily too, a birthday gift, but she can keep that. The wedding ring he needs.

  A little unsteady, he sits on the narrow bed. Outside in the corridor a door opens and footsteps walk away. He is wasting time. She’s gone to Bird Island and if he wants to find her, he has to go there too.

  He gets up. On the desk beside the incubator is an open chart, weighed down with a stapler, a calculator and a reference book. It shows the entire island of South Georgia, a circle drawn in red ink around Bird Island in the top corner. To one edge of the chart are stuck several Post-it notes. The first seems to be a crude calculation of the journey time in a RIB. Six hours, at an average of twenty knots. The next is a list of items she needs to take for people called Jan and Frank. The final one contains radio frequencies and a weather forecast for that day.

  Is it odd, he wonders, that she has taken none of this with her?

  The noticeboard above the desk holds a computer print-out of a work timetable. She’s outlined that day and the following two in red ink and written: Bird Island, fledgling tagging. Her plans really couldn’t be clearer.

  So, she is six hours distant, and the only way to follow her will be by boat. Somehow, though, he doesn’t think stealing a RIB will be quite as straightforward as picking a lock. If she’s gone to Bird Island, she’s successfully put herself beyond his reach and he’s travelled across the entire world for nothing.

  He wanted to talk, that’s all. To fucking well talk.

  Freddie is overcome by a sudden urge to wreck, to destroy. He turns to the penguin chicks and imagines hurling their cage against the far wall, taking his knife to her clothes, smashing the glass of the photograph into fragments. He steps towards it.

  Except … in one of the neatest rooms he’s ever seen, she’s left a chart open on the desk, left behind weather reports she’ll probably need.

  Freddie takes a moment, breathing deeply, until the rage subsides. Then he reaches beneath the desk to pull out the wastepaper basket and upends it. Crumpled tissues, a can of diet Coke, and an empty box of – he holds the label up to face the light – water purification tablets.

  Why will she need water purification tablets at a BAS base? Why circle Bird Island on a chart that she’ll need again? And according to the woman in the shop, she’s been stocking up on supplies when she’ll surely be able to get everything she needs from the base. A smile breaks Freddie’s face. He’s done here.

  The door of Felicity’s room closes softly behind him and he turns for the main entrance.

  ‘Help you, mate?’

  Freddie spins back to face the slim man in jeans and a sweater. He is in his mid- to late thirties and something about his stance, if not necessarily his build or his stubbled beard, suggests the military.

  ‘I’m looking for Felicity,’ Freddie says. ‘Have you seen her?’

  The man’s blue eyes narrow as he glances towards Felicity’s closed door. ‘You were in her room?’ His voice is pitched low, with a trace of a northern English accent.

  ‘No, I just knocked. No answer.’

  ‘How did you know which room is hers?’

  ‘She told me.’ The lie comes easily. ‘Number six. She’s expecting me.’

  ‘You came on the ship this morning?’

  ‘How else? So, do you know where she is?’

  The man speaks reluctantly, unhappy, but constrained by politeness. ‘She’s planning to head out to one of the other bases. Up on the north-west coast. Hours from here. Did she know you were coming?’

  ‘Bird Island? Is that the place?’

  ‘Jack, have you got a sec?’

  A woman in her forties, heavily built, with dark curly hair and thick glasses, has appeared at the far end of the corridor.

  The bloke, Jack, half turns. ‘Hi, Susan, what’s up?’

  ‘Nigel wants to talk to us both. You haven’t seen Felicity this morning, have you? Ralph thinks she’s off to Bird Island but I’ve just spoken to Jen and she says the arrangements were all very vague. Only that she’d come up if she could and let them know. They’ve heard nothing today.’

  Catching sight of Freddie, the woman’s eyes widen. ‘Good morning,’ she says. ‘I’m Susan Brindle, station chief.’ She takes a step towards them. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Also looking for Felicity,’ Freddie says. ‘And frankly getting worried about her. Is she actually missing?’

  Susan’s eyes dart from one man to the other. ‘Well, that’s what we need to find out. Maybe you should come with us.’

  ‘I need to let the ship know where I am. I’ll come back. Where do I report to, the harbour master’s office?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Thanks for your help.’ Freddie turns on his heels and walks back to the side door, knowing the man called Jack wants to follow him, but will probably prioritise finding Felicity. Getting outside unhindered proves him right. Not wasting any time, he sets off, crossing the rough ground to where he’s left his stuff. He is no longer the only one looking for Felicity and the chances of stealing a boat, slim to begin with, have dwindled to zero. Luckily, those idiots don’t know her half as well as he does. They’ll chase her to Bird Island. They won’t find her.

  14

  Felicity

  Felisssitee … Is that his voice? She turns on the spot, peering in doorways, through shattered windows, looking for anything that moves. It might not even be a voice at all. The wind makes all manner of weird and unearthly sounds as it slides in and out of the dereliction here.

  Felisssitee …

  Impossible. He cannot be here. No one could have got here before she did, especially not the man she saw last on the launch heading towards Grytviken.

  To Felicity’s right are the barrack blocks, where the whalers lived in the old days. There are eight, maybe ten of them, all more or less intact. Doors swing on hinges, broken window glass hangs like icicles. He could be watching from any of them. To her left is the long, thin building that housed the station’s boilers. A deep, rhythmic clanging comes from within. Is he in there, tapping a metal rod against the rotting tanks?

  No. It is not humanly possible. It’s the wind, playing tricks on her overwrought, nervous imagination.

  A sheet of iron falls across the path and panic snaps the spell that held her frozen. Dropping both bags, she runs. Di
rectly ahead are the huge tanks where the whale oil was stored before being shipped back to the northern hemisphere. Taller than most of the buildings, more intact than all of them, they are great circular towers and offer no hiding place. On impulse she darts into the provision store.

  Instantly, the wind drops.

  The building is large and rectangular. Light streams in through a hole in the roof but the walls are solid. She sees a counter stretched across the width of the room in the manner of a shop front and behind it stand row after row of shelving units. Some have fallen, knocking others, like dominoes. There is even some food left behind. The tinned goods have long since gone, and the sugar has been eaten by rats, but packets of flour and salt have solidified where they sit.

  Felicity’s feet crunch on broken glass as she creeps to a window. A petrel is perched on the guano factory opposite. It watches her, head on one side, before throwing back its head and screeching.

  Felisssitee …

  She spins around. That sounded so close, as though he was directly behind her, and yet she is still alone in the provision store.

  Not him then, but voices she is conjuring in her own mind again. A wave of despair sweeps through her. She’d been so sure she’d left the madness behind in Cambridge and yet just the sight of him has brought it all back.

  Are those footsteps outside, crunching over gravel? They are heavy, regular and seem to be getting closer, and yet a large bird hopping around could make a similar sound. Outside, the day darkens as storm clouds move in front of the sun. In the provision store, Felicity’s breath is visible in the cold air. She backs away, with no idea whether or not there is another way out of the store, only knowing she has to get away from the footsteps that are tracking her down. Her rucksack slams into the counter and she jumps, spinning herself over it and dodging behind one of the few shelving units that are still upright.

  The black silhouette that would prove her worst fears doesn’t materialise.

  Unable to take her eyes away from the door, she backs further into the store, only to hear the sound of something moving in the shadows behind her. Impossible. He cannot be approaching from outside and be in the store with her at the same time. All the same, she is definitely not alone. In the darkness, something slithers. There is a clattering sound. She has no idea which way to turn.

  Her foot backs up against a fallen shelf unit and she loses balance. Something strikes her head. She lands hard and dust surrounds her. She hears the sound of something sliding closer and then all light leaves the store.

  Ten, nine, eight, I hope you’re in a good hiding place, Felicity.

  This is a dream. It has to be. It is exactly the same as all the others. She crouches in the darkness, naked and terrified, and somewhere outside the man she dreads plays a grotesque parody of hide and seek.

  Seven, six …

  She presses herself against the rough wall of the cupboard beneath the stairs. No, no, she is in the provision store at Husvik, a dreadful enough place, but not the one that haunts her nightmares. She really has to wake up now.

  Five, four, three – oh, my, this is exciting!

  She can’t scream. Screaming makes him worse. It always hurts more if she screams.

  Two, one, coming ready or not. Are you ready, sweetheart, because you can bet your ass I’m coming.

  Felicity screams, long and loud and the sound brings her back to herself. Pain in the back of her skull tells her she may have blacked out for a few minutes. Outside the store, a flurry of gulls takes to the air. Spotting a broken stretch of pipework she grabs it and gets to her feet.

  She remembers the sounds she heard from inside the store and spins on the spot. The shadows remain still, but is that heavy, laboured breathing she can hear?

  Outside, the wind keens its lonely path around the chimneys.

  The doorway is empty. The footsteps have gone. She waits for that cruel, teasing voice to call out her name again. Nothing. He isn’t here. He can’t be here. Everything is fine. She’ll make her way to the manager’s villa, find somewhere en route to hide her stuff, and then sit it out. When the Snow Queen has gone, she’ll return to King Edward Point, with a story about how an oncoming storm and problems with the RIB engine forced her to take shelter for several days. She’ll apologise for any alarm and then she’ll get on with her work. There are no more cruise ships due until spring and private yachts never come in winter.

  She’ll be safe. Her troubled mind will heal itself again, and no one will know that anything was wrong.

  She pulls herself up onto the counter, is about to swing her legs over and down the other side, when a great lumbering beast, nearly four metres long and weighing well over a ton, looms out of the shadows with a great, throaty roar. She feels the elephant seal’s huge snout against her thigh a second before it bites.

  15

  Freddie

  In May 1915, at the height of the South Georgia winter, British explorer Ernest Shackleton landed his open boat along with a handful of crew at Haakon Bay on the north-west coast of the island. Exhausted, half-starved and frostbitten, Shackleton and two of his men began the first confirmed land crossing of South Georgia’s interior.

  Their twenty-mile hike took them into the history books. With no map, they improvised a route across uncharted terrain, hammering nails into the soles of their 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. She shouldn’t have slept. She has to keep watch. If her decoy hasn’t worked, if he’s managed to get hold of a boat, he could be here by now.

  She pulls herself to her feet and using only the headtorch, rolls up the sleeping bag and tucks it away at the back of a cupboard. Then she checks the bandage on her leg. The bleeding seems to have stopped but an infection is entirely possible. She glances around the bedroom as she leaves it and sees nothing to indicate she’s ever been in.