DECEMBER 1887 – BUNDE FJORD, NORWAY

The fifteen-year-old shivers as he wedges his bedroom window open with a rag. Even if the wind picks up, it won’t slam shut. He hopes it will snow in the night, forcing the temperature in his bedroom well below zero. The colder the better. Suffering is part of the pleasure. Tucked under his bedclothes, Roald waits until his breath turns white. Only then does he reach for his book.

Sir John Franklin’s men are starved. On the Coppermine River there is no game to hunt. They’ve covered a thousand kilometres and mapped a small section of the Arctic coast. Fort Enterprise lies a week’s march away, but they are exhausted. They have nothing to eat. They make do with foraged lichen and boil up the leather from their spare boots. Two men find a maggot-ridden carcass abandoned by a pack of wolves. It’s a hearty meal for dying men.

‘What are you doing?’ Roald’s mother exclaims, bustling into the room. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold.’

‘Leave it open, I like the fresh air,’ Roald says from behind the cover of Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea.

‘Nonsense.’ Roald’s mother wrenches the rag free and snaps the window shut. ‘I’ve just lost your father. I don’t want to lose a son.’

Roald does not need reminding that his father is dead and his older brothers have all left home. ‘Leave me please, Mother,’ he says with tenderness. ‘I’m enjoying my book.’

‘Sir John Franklin,’ Roald’s mother muses, tilting the cover of the book. ‘Is that the Arctic explorer?’

‘The very same,’ says Roald distractedly, his gaze once again glued to the text.

‘Don’t you get any ideas now,’ she says, heading for the door. ‘You’re going to go to medical school.’

Roald doesn’t want to be a doctor; he would rather become an Arctic explorer and be hungry, frozen and close to death. Roald slips out of bed and once again wedges his window open.