The Last Vikings

Epilogue: #Blessed

In the end, Paulo turned out not to be dark or tortured at all. It was just that—as Dostoyevsky informs us—planning and executing murder can play havoc with the isolated mind.

We stayed holed up at Oates for the rest of the winter, shell-shocked. Paulo, Phil and I sharing heavy, world-weary glances while Stephen and Davey pottered oblivious around us.

We kept our heads down when the Russians turned up to clear the ice hotel, and blamed it all on the inevitable hypothermia. The governments that had lost citizens in the ice hotel disaster (all the influencers were either American or European, of course) appeared to accept this, with the caveat that a class action suite was launched against the Russian owners of Intrepid for not providing proper pre-deployment training. A lot of terms like Polar T3 Syndrome and Winter Over Disorder were thrown around.

Seems Antarctica is well known for sending people mad.

I was quite worried when I was interviewed by the police via satellite link-up from Oates, but they seemed mostly relieved that the only British Citizen on the trip had—thanks to an illicit affair with a polar scientist—moved away from the hotel, freeing them from the complex mess of Antarctica's lack of legal system and the ensuing international litigation.

It was quite the media sensation for a week, but by the time spring came and we at Oates could touch the world again, our little drama had been well buried under landslide over landslide over landslide of rolling global news.

After that, life at the research station went on. Davey did one more winter. Stephen transferred to Halley, where he saved a life quite miraculously in a crevasse incident a few years later.

The radiometer was reinstated, and despite the few weeks' blip, it still gave good results. In 2023, Phil got a Royal Society of Chemistry Prize for her groundbreaking research on atmospheric reactive nitrogen release and unprecedented shifts in global ocean currents.

She stayed at Oates until retirement. She even got married out there, to a Dutch girl working on ice cores, in a ceremony on the snow. Paulo and I beamed in to watch the wedding on Skype.

Me and Paulo?

As soon as the sun broke over the horizon and the planes recommenced their flights, we left Antarctica for good.

We were welcomed in Shetland with open arms.

I think my mum had gone through a very secret but very real process of grieving when Ben and I broke up, realising she may never have grandchildren.

It would have been slim pickings had I come back to our island of cousins single—the only available man under fifty being Barry Goodlad, who she'd already written off as an ill-tempered bampit.

Suffice to say, when I turned up not only assuring her I was finally home forever, but also with an extremely attractive—and exceedingly polite—young man in tow, she was delighted.

My entire family—including my bevvy of female cousins, much to my chagrin—treated Paulo like he was the second coming. They couldn't have been kinder if they tried.

Not that it was easy for him.

The events of that polar winter hung heavy on his mind, and he suffered three years of intense but intermittent depression in the wake of it.

At night, he frequently awoke gasping, gripping at the sheets. During the day he had long spells of quiet, times he couldn't bear to speak to anyone but me.