Outpost

‘I suppose your Church didn’t hear the place got moth- balled.’ They ran from a typhoon of rotor-wash as the Sikorsky took off. ‘Rampart hasn’t been pumping for a year. The Kasker field is running dry. All the easy oil got sucked. Sooner or later the rig will get redeployed someplace like the Gulf of Mexico or sold to India for scrap. Dumb bureaucracy. Same wherever you go. Anyway. Hello.’ He shook Jane’s hand. ‘Gary Punch. I’m the chef.’

He showed Jane to the accommodation block. ‘This is your room,’ he said, ‘but there are plenty of others if you want to switch. You have this entire block to yourself. Most of the crewmen meet for dinner in the canteen at seven. Other than that, people keep to themselves. Better get used to your own company, because this place is a ghost town.’

Jane threw her cassock over a chair. She took a chocolate bar from a stash hidden behind a big Bible in the vestry cupboard. She perched on the altar and ate. She was useless, alone and unloved.

She headed back to her room. It was a long journey down white corridors that receded to vanishing point. The refinery was so big some guys used bicycles to get around. The infirmary had a stretcher-car like a golf buggy. It was kept chained to stop the crew taking joyrides.

She walked the route out of habit, but stopped by an exterior door when it occurred to her there was no reason to return to her room. Earlier that morning she had resolved to jump from the rig. Why wait until nightfall?

She spun the hatch wheel and stepped into a quilted airlock.

WARNING

EXTREME COLD

SAFETY CLOTHING AND TWO-MAN PROTOCOL AT ALL TIMES

She heaved open the exterior door and the sudden shock of cold sucked breath from her body. Vicious wind-chill. Minus thirty and no coat. Her skin burned.

Jane stepped out on to a walkway. Boot clang. Bleak daylight. A vast machine-scape. Massive storage tanks. Gantries, crossbeams and pipework dripped ice. A steel archipelago. One of the largest floating structures on earth.

She leaned over a railing. She touched the iced metal for a moment then snatched her hand away like it had been scorched on a stove. She looked down. Far below, hidden by mist, was the sea. She could hear water lapping between the great floatation legs of the refinery. If she climbed the railing and allowed herself to topple forward it would be over in an instant. A hundred-metre drop through white vapour. The impact would smash her bones as if she hit concrete. Quick extinction, like an Off switch.

She put one foot on the railing and willed herself to jump. She had been outside less than a minute, but was shivering as if in an epileptic seizure. Her vision blurred. She wanted to jump but couldn’t do it. Muscle lock. Too scared of falling. Too scared of pain. She went back inside and stood beneath a corridor heat vent. She cursed her cowardice. She plucked a frozen tear from her cheek and watched the little jewel liquefy between her fingers.

Plan B: retreat to her room and swallow a fatal overdose of painkillers.

Jane had been collecting painkillers for the past couple of months. Each time she bought deodorant or gum from the table in the canteen she took a packet of paracetamol. The pills were in a bag beneath her bed.

She stopped at the canteen kitchen to collect a tub of ice cream. The steel door of the refrigerator rippled her face like a funhouse mirror.

Accommodation Block Three. Long passageways. Empty stairwells.

Each crew member was assigned a small cell with a bed and a chair. They got a clothes locker, a washstand cubicle and a metal toilet. A scratched Perspex porthole allowed Jane a view of the basalt cliffs and jagged crags of Franz Josef Land. Desolate, lunar terrain. Volcanic crags dusted with snow. In a few weeks the sun would set and the long Arctic night would begin.

‘Hi, honey. I’m home.’

She stripped, sat on the bed and popped pills from their foil strips. She piled the tablets on the blanket until they formed a little white mound. She mashed the pills into a tub of Cookie Dough. She wanted to write a note but couldn’t think what to say.

She opened her laptop. She wanted to hear a familiar voice. She selected an old message from home. A cam clip. Jane’s sister, sitting in a sunlit room. Jane clicked the Play arrow.

‘Hi, Janey. How are things at the top of the world? Just wanted to say hello and tell you how proud we are of what you are doing. Can’t imagine what it must be like up there. It must be tough looking after all those guys. Or maybe you are enjoying a bit of male attention. Fighting them off with a chair. Anyway, Mum sends her love…’

If she were home, she might pick up the phone and reach out for help. But the only contact with the mainland was the microwave link in the installation manager’s office. An open line with a stilted, two-second delay.