LONDON
As Katie came out of Green Park underground station, the lights of the street seemed garish, the noise of the traffic assaulted her ears. She felt almost overwhelmed by the rush hour crowd hurrying and jostling as they headed for the underground and home. All these people.
She was relieved to turn off Piccadilly into the relative quiet of Arlington Street and to reach the entrance of the Ritz hotel. The doorman called her “ma’am” and explained how to get to the Rivoli Bar.
Expensive-looking people were checking in or having afternoon tea in the lobby. It was the poshest place Katie had ever been and she was glad she had come as Caitlin, because Caitlin was the kind of person who wouldn’t be fazed by this.
She checked the time on her phone. She was quarter of an hour early. She didn’t want to arrive too much before Justin, so she went to look for the Ladies. It was down a steep flight of stairs. There was an attendant and little gilded chairs. She sat on one and examined herself doubtfully in the mirror.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had worn a dress. This was just above knee-length and frankly looked a bit like a sack. But she was certainly going to stand out from the crowd, because the top half was navy and from the top of her thighs down it was a block of solid red. She was still wearing the make-up that the woman on the cosmetics counter in Selfridges had applied for her following Vicky’s recommendation: a bright red lipstick called Russian Red, black eye-liner, and mascara. “People don’t really wear much make-up in the lab,” she had protested. Vicky had been firm: “I’ve got my instructions. You’ll wear these every day.” And Katie had to admit that, combined with the spiky blonde hair, it made her look like a different person. My own mother wouldn’t recognize me, she thought, gazing into the mirror. But, hey, this was the Ritz, and she was supposed to be dressed up, right? Right... Vicky had even chosen a scent for her: Diorissimo by Dior.
She wondered what Justin would be wearing. It was hard to imagine him in anything other than his Antarctic gear. But presumably he wouldn’t actually be in jeans, a T-shirt, and enormous bunny boots.
She glanced at her watch. She was a few minutes late now. It was time to go.
* * *
Entering the Rivoli Bar was like stepping into a luxurious cavern, all gold leaf, rich woods, and art deco decoration. The chairs were upholstered in a leopard-skin fabric. The room was dimly lit and intimate.
The white-coated waiter enquired solicitously: “How has your day been?”
Justin was sitting at a table for two in a corner and she saw him before he saw her. He had shaved off his beard – it was the first time she’d seen him without one – and he’d had a proper haircut. He’d scrubbed up well and he was even better looking than she had remembered. And he was wearing a really sharp suit and a fab tie. Oh, wow! Her heart fluttered and she had that going-down-in-a-lift sensation.
“I’m meeting my friend over there,” she told the waiter.
As she walked towards Justin she saw something vulnerable in his expression, as if perhaps he wasn’t quite sure that she was really going to come.
He looked up and his eyes briefly met hers, then slid away, uninterested, to look past her towards the door. For a moment she was taken aback and then she understood. He hadn’t recognized her! So the makeover had worked. She registered a second thought. He wasn’t the kind of guy who automatically assessed every woman he saw, and she was glad of that.
She stopped at his table. “Hello, Justin.”
He stared at her. “Katie?”
She couldn’t help laughing at the surprise on his face and the wonder in his voice.
The waiter who had shown her to the table hastened to pull out a chair for her and she sat down. Justin was still gazing at her with his mouth open. Then he remembered himself and got to his feet and came round the table. He pulled her into a hug. He was wearing some kind of aftershave that smelt of limes. That was new too.
They pulled back. He said, “You smell gorgeous, and you look – well, wow! Sorry about my reaction; it was just that, well –”
“I know. Not quite what you were expecting. I don’t normally look like this even when I’ve dressed up for a special occasion. I’m kind of... in disguise.”
“In disguise! I can’t wait to hear about it. But first, let’s order a drink, shall we?”
Perusing the extensive list of cocktails and ordering their drinks and canapés occupied them for the first ten minutes. Katie chose a champagne cocktail and Justin chose something with a fancy name that was basically a dry martini, and then they talked about the others who had shared winter with them on the base, where they were and what they were doing. A reunion was planned for the following year – and a wedding too. Katie and Justin weren’t the only ones to have fallen in love during that long Antarctic night.
Had they fallen in love? Katie asked herself. Perhaps they were really just mates whose attraction to one another owed more to being thrown together than to any real compatibility. After all, for most of the time she had been the only woman on the base. It was hardly surprising that she’d been the focus of male attention.
A silence fell.
Perhaps it had been a mistake, meeting like this. It would have been better to meet somewhere low-key, a Cambridge pub maybe. She began to feel self-conscious, all dressed up like this, and it really felt as though this was a proper date between two people who hardly knew each other. And there was something else. Without his beard, Justin was so good-looking – the kind of guy who’d usually be way out of her league, but in any case not the type that she tended to go for. She remembered that her private name for him when she’d first met him on the base had been Surfer Dude because he’d had longish blonde hair and broad shoulders. Did they really have that much in common with each other?
Their drinks and canapés arrived, and they toasted one another. Their eyes met and Katie was the first to look away.
Justin said, “I haven’t adjusted yet to living in a world with money. I keep paying for things with a twenty pound note and then wandering off without the change.”
“I know. Me too.” She told him that it had been almost frightening getting on the tube with all those people.
“It’s only temporary,” he said. “It’ll wear off in a few months. But something will remain of it. It was such a unique experience.”
“You can take the girl out of Antarctica, but you can’t take Antarctica out of the girl?”
“It’s true, isn’t it? It’ll always be in us now, won’t it?” he said.
“Will you ever go back?”
He thought about that. “I can imagine wanting to one day. I’ll feel drawn back, I’m sure. There was a poem that we read at school: W. B. Yeats, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’. I looked it up when I got home. It went something like this:
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”
“‘The deep heart’s core’,” she repeated. “Yes, that’s wonderful.”
For a few moments neither of them spoke, united by their shared memories.
“What’s your plan now?” he asked. “Does it have something to do with all this?” He made a gesture that took in her clothes and hair and make-up.
She hesitated. She’d said she would explain. She had been told not to tell people where she was going. But this was Justin. In Antarctica they’d both been tested to the limit. If she couldn’t trust him after all they’d been through together, who could she trust? And how was she going to explain her absence if she didn’t tell him?
He was looking expectantly at her.
She took the plunge and told him about going undercover. When she mentioned Debussy Point and Devon, she saw disappointment in his face.
He said, “I was hoping you wouldn’t be too far from Cambridge.”
“It’s not going to be for long,” she said, glad that he minded. “No more than a few weeks, probably, or a couple of months at the most. Only as long as it takes me to find out what’s going on, and probably nothing’s going on.”
“What exactly is this research that they’re doing? Explain it to me in words of one syllable.”
“OK.” Katie thought about it. “We’ve got the genome, or total genetic make-up, of our avian flu virus, basically one long strand of what’s called RNA – as distinct from DNA.” She looked at him to see if he understood and he nodded. “OK, well, in order to reproduce, the virus has to latch on to a cell in the host creature and insert its genome. The viral genome then commandeers the cell’s normal metabolism. It can then make loads of copies of itself and package them up into new baby viruses.”
“Yes, I understand that. It takes over the cell to make copies of itself.”
“That’s right, and then the copies burst out of the cell and take over more cells and eventually colonize the body of the host, in this case a bird.”
“And what is it that this researcher says she’s done?”
“She claims she’s managed to manipulate the genome of the virus so that it can meld with the outer wall of a human cell. In other words, she has discovered a mechanism by which it can jump the species barrier.”
“Wow. Is that... well, isn’t that a bit dangerous?” He looked concerned.
“It is. That’s why the work takes place in a Cat 3 lab. Security is really tight.”
“Before you go on, let’s order another cocktail,” Justin said. “Same again? And maybe we’d better have something more substantial to soak up the alcohol.”
“Let’s go for smoked salmon sandwiches.”
He summoned the waiter and ordered. As he handed the menu to the waiter she saw the scar on his hand, the result of a serious burn that he had received on the base.
When the waiter had gone, she reached for his hand to have a look.
“It’s healed well,” she remarked, tracing the scar with her finger.
“Thanks to you,” he said. His fingers closed around hers and he clasped her hand.
He looked into her eyes.
And that was when she knew. This was so not a mistake. On the base she hadn’t been sure she was falling in love with Justin. She was sure now. And she could see it in his eyes that he felt the same way. Her head was swimming and it wasn’t just the cocktail. Was he about to kiss her, right here in the middle of the Ritz?
He said, “I could...”
“Yes?”
“I could see if I can book a room.”
Her phone, lying beside her glass, buzzed. She couldn’t help glancing at it – an automatic response – and a text flashed into view: “Have gone into labour.”