Sun at Midnight
An epic love story and adventure set against the stunning backdrop of Antarctica.Alice Peel is a geologist. She believes in observation and proof. But now she stands alone on the deck of a rickety Chilean ship as a stark landscape reveals itself. Instead of the familiar measurable world, everything that lies ahead of her is unknown and unpredictable.Six weeks earlier her life was comfortably unfolding in an Oxford summer. Then, with her relationship suddenly in pieces, she accepted an invitation to join a group working at the end of the earth: Antarctica.James Rooker is a man on the run. He's been running since his childhood in New Zealand. Now, there is nowhere further to go. He has taken a job working on the same small Antarctic research station.Alice discovers an ice-blue and silver world, lit by sunlight. Nothing has prepared her for the beauty of it, or the claustrophobia of a tiny base shared with eight men and one other woman. The isolation wipes out everyone's past, and tension crackles in the air. But there is a jolt of recognition between Alice and Rooker that is like nothing she has ever known. And it is in Antartica that she discovers something else that will change her life forever … if she survives.
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Sun at Midnight
Rosie Thomas
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2004
Copyright © Rosie Thomas 2004
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016 Jacket photographs © Shutterstock.com
Rosie Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007173525
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2016 ISBN: 9780007389568
Version: 2016-09-27
Praise for Rosie Thomas
‘Rosie Thomas writes with beautiful, effortless prose, and shows a rare compassion and a real understanding of the nature of love.’
The Times
‘Honest and absorbing.’
Mail on Sunday
‘A master storyteller.’
Cosmopolitan
‘Thomas’s novels are beautifully written.’
Marie Claire
‘Terrific…a real weepy.’
Sunday Times
‘A story full of passion…will keep you reading long after bedtime.’
New Woman
For the members of the XIth Bulgaria Antarctic Expedition – Christo, Dimo, Dany, Elmira, Koko, Milcho, Murphy, Niki, Roumi, Stanko and Valentin – with love and grateful thanks.
‘always on our team’
Contents
The wind blew straight off the frozen bay. It was thickened with sleet but the man working on the skeleton roof didn’t seem to notice the cold, or the way the flecks of ice drove into his eyes. He had climbed the raw wood truss at one end of the building and now he straddled the main beam high above the mud- and snow-smeared mess of the site. The hotel had been due to open at the beginning of the short summer season, but the weather had been bad even by local standards, and the work had been slow and dogged with problems. Now the job was way behind schedule. The first fix wasn’t even finished, a month before the completion date. The site crew were mostly Mexican, the main contractor was from Buenos Aires and they all hated the cold. The architect worked for a big commercial practice in Portland, Oregon, and he flew into town and found fault for a couple of days before flying right out again. The hotel company was German-owned, with an aggressive development programme and a policy of cutting construction costs right to the bone.
All of this was routine, however. It was work, life’s usual shit. James Rooker didn’t even bother to think about it.
He vaulted along the beam, squinting against the wind and snow, checking the bolts that secured the plates that held the trusses in place. The wood was split and some of the bolts were missing. This was Juan’s and Pepito’s work, of course.
Down below, the whistle sounded for the end of the day. Instantly a trail of men straggled across the site to deposit their tools and pick up their coats.
Rooker looked across to the bay and the snow slopes lining the Beagle Channel. It was September and the only ship in the harbour was an ugly Russian ice breaker waiting to head south, but in a few more weeks it would be summer and the cruise ships would be moored up on either side of the main jetty. The town would be full of tourists in fleeces and hiking boots, coming and going from their sea voyages and their glacier hikes and waterfall sightseeing trips and treks in the National Park. There would be a little blue-painted funfair train running through the streets, and an employee of the tourist company dressed in a giant penguin suit would spend five hours of every day posing for photographs and using his flipper to shake hands. It would soon be time to be somewhere else. As this occurred to him, Rooker noticed that the snow had stopped. A slice of sky showed through the clouds and an oblique shaft of silver light fell across the sea ice.
