Laline Paull - The Ice - A gripping thriller for our times from the Bailey’s shortlisted author of The Bees

‘I’m fine,’ said Gail, ‘really. We’re just talking.’

‘And I don’t like you calling me that,’ he said. ‘I’m still your father.’ The way she looked at him broke his heart.

‘Uh-uh, you sacked yourself. A father is someone you’re supposed to be able to trust, who gives his word and keeps it, who doesn’t cheat and lie again and again, when they’ve promised not to. Mum cries every day you know.’

‘Oh for goodness sake, I do not—’

‘My god! Why does everybody lie the whole time?’

‘Some day, Rosie,’ he said, ‘you might understand that things are not always black and—’

‘White,’ she finished for him, ‘I know. They’re in the grey , and in the grey , Rosie, is where people like me make their money and tell their lies and generally screw up other people’s lives. In the grey. I’ve got it. Sean.’

‘She doesn’t know,’ Gail said quietly.

‘Know what? Ugh: you’re expecting a little bébé with her . Well it’s never going to have anything to do with me.’

‘No, that’s not why I’ve come, and I didn’t know you were here, I thought it was term time. I came to tell your mother that Tom’s body has been found. And in person, Rosie, not to be insulted by you but to break it gently to her. Except she already knew.’

Rosie stared at her mother in shock.

‘Ruth called me this morning.’ Gail put her arm round her daughter. ‘I’ll tell you all about it.’ She looked at Sean over Rosie’s shoulder. ‘Thank you for coming. I appreciate it.’

He stared at his crying daughter, and his stranger of an ex-wife. He was being dismissed from his own home. Ex-home. But still his child.

‘Rosie,’ he said gently, ‘if you ever wanted to see me—’

‘Why would I want to do that?’ She didn’t look at him.

‘Because you’re my daughter and I love you.’

‘Don’t hold your breath.’ She ducked out from under her mother’s arm and ran upstairs, her face crumpling.

The Vanquish blinked an electronic greeting. Sean drove carefully down the rutted, waterlogged private lane, then into the long single-lane road. The numbness was definitely gone, the encounter had left him raw with failure.

A short sharp blast of a horn ahead returned his attention to the narrow road, where a battered red Land Rover pulling a trailer was upon him. A man and a woman in matching jackets – James and Emma Goring. OK, he could do this. He’d only just gone by a passing place so he waved then reversed, shaking himself out of his funk, ready to greet them. The shattered bones of the past, knitting back together. He would tell them what had happened.

James and Emma – he couldn’t remember their children’s names – but over nearly a decade they had eaten at each other’s houses, bought rounds at the Acorn, gone to firework parties, shared New Year – the stuff of life that slowly accretes into friendship. But they did not appear to recognise him. In fact, James raised a casual finger of thanks and was about to drive on, until Sean called out.

James did a double-take, and stopped. ‘Sean!’ he said. Emma lowered the phone she had been checking, and just that second also officially recognised him too, with a bright smile.

Engines running, they exchanged enthusiastic concerns about the weather and the state of the lanes, and Sean told them about the dust storm, which they’d seen on TV but only got a little of here, weren’t they lucky with their microclimate? And then the awkward pause.

Sean knew they wanted to go. He felt angry, he kept them talking, anything, about all the new vineyards, the farm, while he absorbed the fact they hadn’t wanted to stop. Pretending they hadn’t recognised him. People got divorced, people moved on – he looked pointedly at their trailer, where big sound speakers were covered with a tarp.

‘Of course!’ he said. ‘Your solstice party – here’s hoping for sunshine!’

‘Oh,’ James said quickly, ‘very small this year.’

‘Big speakers, for a small party.’

‘Not really.’

They looked at each other, their smiles fading. They were not going to invite him.

‘I came down to tell Gail a dear friend of ours died.’ Sean had to look up at them from his lower vehicle. ‘We’re still friends.’

‘Best way,’ said James. ‘And sorry for your loss.’

‘Absolutely,’ Emma said. ‘So sorry. Take care, Sean.’

James put the Land Rover in gear and the loaded trailer rattled dangerously close to the Aston as they passed, attention fixed on the lane ahead. Then they were gone.

Sean stared after them in the rear-view mirror, his heart pounding like he’d been in a fight. He’d thought of them as friends – he’d brought out his best wine and put up with their tedious company in the hope that they would surely reveal themselves at some point – he presumed it was just that English reserve—

No. They had never been friends; they had always been cold to him. It was Gail they’d liked, he knew they thought she’d married down. The loss of Tom burned through him again: Tom who had been a true friend and a gentleman, always showing the same kindness and self-respect whether he was talking to a tramp or a billionaire. Sean heard Kingsmith’s voice in his head, from the old days, when he’d taken a business loss. Learn, and don’t look back . He checked the time, and told the satnav Heathrow.

There is a power that we call Sila, which is not to be explained in simple words. A great spirit, supporting the world and the weather and all life on earth, a spirit so mighty that his utterance to mankind is not through common words, but by storm and snow and rain and the fury of the sea; all the forces of nature that men fear.

When all is well, Sila sends no message to mankind, but withdraws into his own endless nothingness, apart. So he remains as long as men do not abuse life, but act with reverence towards their daily food.

No one has seen Sila; his place of being is a mystery, in that he is at once among us and unspeakably far away.

Across Arctic America: Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition (1927)

Knud Rasmussen

Sitting in 1F, crammed against the plastic wall, the smell of his neighbour’s duty-free aftershave in his nose, Sean remembered Tom’s grim prediction that Svalbard would become the Ibiza of the north. The midnight sun, exotic locale, and public awareness of the fragility of the region had created the strongest driver for tourism the Arctic had ever seen. Now Longyearbyen even had its own club scene, a Mecca for outward-bound hen and stag parties and rich kids bored of skiing.

Sean watched the stewardess and her cart coming closer. The clink of ice made him swallow in anticipation. He must reframe the shock as closure. A stone – a literal heavy headstone, could be laid on Tom’s recovered body in its grave, and on the hope he would return.

‘Sir, any drinks or snacks?’ the stewardess repeated, with an economy-class smile. She passed him his two miniature vodkas, tin of tonic and a plastic cup with a single ice cube and moved on quickly before he could ask for more. He didn’t bother with the tonic, just poured in both vodkas and knocked it back. No matter what Kingsmith and Martine said, in his heart he knew this was anything but closure. He’d learned to live with the idea of Tom lost in pristine obscurity – that was how many Arctic heroes ended their story. His reappearance was unscripted, as if the glacier itself had moved against him.

Another shadow fell on his thoughts, provoked by Gail’s reference to his still-imminent knighthood. The New Year and Birthday honours had come and gone three times, but there was always a good reason he had to wait – bit of a backlog, wheels within wheels, don’t worry—