Rosie Thomas - Sun at Midnight

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2004

Copyright © Rosie Thomas 2004

Cover layout design Caroline Young © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020

Jacket photographs © Singhaphan AIIB/Getty Images (background), Till Findl/Eye Em/Getty Images (kayaker)

Rosie Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007173525

Ebook Edition © October 2020 ISBN: 9780007389568

Version: 2020-09-25

‘Rosie Thomas writes with beautiful, effortless prose, and shows a rare compassion and a real understanding of the nature of love’

The Times

‘Honest and absorbing, Rosie Thomas mixes the bitter and the hopeful with the knowledge that the human heart is far more complicated than any rule suggests’

Mail on Sunday

‘A master storyteller’

Cosmopolitan

‘Thomas’s novels are beautifully written. This one is a treat’

Marie Claire

‘A lush and sweeping voyage of self-discovery’

Eithne Farry, Daily Mail

‘Prepare to be dazzled … an epic tale of sisterhood and betrayal’

Company

‘Heart-rending and beautifully written … I read it in one delicious go, tears pouring down my face. You cannot fail to be moved’

Emma Lee-Potter, Express

‘A terrific book, beautifully written … questions about identity, belonging, infidelity, dying and forgiveness make this a very moving study of the human heart’

Australian Women’s Weekly

For the members of the XIth Bulgaria Antarctic Expedition – Christo, Dimo, Dany, Elmira, Koko, Milcho, Murphy, Niki, Roumi, Stanko and Valentin – with love and grateful thanks.

‘always on our team’

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Rosie Thomas

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Rosie Thomas

About the Publisher

The wind blew straight off the frozen bay. It was thickened with sleet but the man working on the skeleton roof didn’t seem to notice the cold, or the way the flecks of ice drove into his eyes. He had climbed the raw wood truss at one end of the building and now he straddled the main beam high above the mud- and snow-smeared mess of the site. The hotel had been due to open at the beginning of the short summer season, but the weather had been bad even by local standards, and the work had been slow and dogged with problems. Now the job was way behind schedule. The first fix wasn’t even finished, a month before the completion date. The site crew were mostly Mexican, the main contractor was from Buenos Aires and they all hated the cold. The architect worked for a big commercial practice in Portland, Oregon, and he flew into town and found fault for a couple of days before flying right out again. The hotel company was German-owned, with an aggressive development programme and a policy of cutting construction costs right to the bone.

All of this was routine, however. It was work, life’s usual shit. James Rooker didn’t even bother to think about it.

He vaulted along the beam, squinting against the wind and snow, checking the bolts that secured the plates that held the trusses in place. The wood was split and some of the bolts were missing. This was Juan’s and Pepito’s work, of course.

Down below, the whistle sounded for the end of the day. Instantly a trail of men straggled across the site to deposit their tools and pick up their coats.

Rooker looked across to the bay and the snow slopes lining the Beagle Channel. It was September and the only ship in the harbour was an ugly Russian ice breaker waiting to head south, but in a few more weeks it would be summer and the cruise ships would be moored up on either side of the main jetty. The town would be full of tourists in fleeces and hiking boots, coming and going from their sea voyages and their glacier hikes and waterfall sightseeing trips and treks in the National Park. There would be a little blue-painted funfair train running through the streets, and an employee of the tourist company dressed in a giant penguin suit would spend five hours of every day posing for photographs and using his flipper to shake hands. It would soon be time to be somewhere else. As this occurred to him, Rooker noticed that the snow had stopped. A slice of sky showed through the clouds and an oblique shaft of silver light fell across the sea ice.

He swung down from his beam and clambered down a series of ladders to the ground. The finished hotel would have sympathetic wood cladding, but as yet it was a grey breeze-block slab with holes poked in it for windows. A pair of men had started work today on the ground-floor door and window frames.

He caught sight of Juan in a group making tracks towards the site gate through the skim of wet snow.

‘Hey!’ Rooker yelled. ‘You, Juan, I want you.’

The man stopped and waited. He was small, dark-skinned and hopeless. ‘ Sí? ’

Rooker towered over him. He jerked a thumb towards the roof timbers. ‘What’s that crap up there?’

The carpenter shrugged. He was used to the foreman’s ways. ‘Weather bad,’ he muttered routinely.

‘Then let’s get the fucking roof on straight, Mex, so we can all have some shelter. Okay?’

‘ Sí .’

‘Bad work, no pesos . Comprende ?’ Rooker rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.

The man nodded and hitched his canvas bag over his shoulder. It was Wednesday and the crew got paid on Thursdays, so there would be no drinking tonight. Juan just wanted to get back to his lodgings for some food and warmth and a night’s sleep.

‘Get on, then,’ Rooker said, losing patience. Everyone else was already gone, Pepito presumably amongst them. The grey light was fading fast. The roof and its correct fixing would have to wait for tomorrow, yet another day. Juan trudged away and Rooker locked up the metal cabin that served as the site hut and tool store. By the time he was padlocking the gate in the metal fencing it was fully dark. Night fell swiftly at this latitude.