‘Who’s Trond?’ I asked. But he’d already gone.

Greta came in. A second later, I realised I’d known her name without thinking about it. That felt like progress.

‘You woke up.’

‘I’m starting to wish I hadn’t.’

‘What do you remember?’

‘I don’t know how much there is to forget.’

‘Do you remember the plane crash?’

‘Very funny.’

‘It’s not a joke.’ Briefly — she doesn’t have any other way of talking — she told me how they’d loaded me on to the Twin Otter to fly me home, how it had turned around with mechanical problems, and how it had crash-landed. ‘You were lucky you survived.’

‘Jesus.’ I lay down on the bed. Sweat soaked my cheeks.

‘Kennedy said you spoke to Luke. To tell him what happened.’

‘Somebody had to.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

‘He said he was staying with his aunt.’

She said it the way she said everything: every word a nail to be hammered in straight. But I heard the question. Or maybe I imagined it, from hearing it so often before.

‘His mother’s dead. In a plane crash, not long after he was born. That’s why, when you told me about the plane …’ I pulled up the sheet and wiped sweat off my face. ‘Both parents — what kind of desperate coincidence would that be?’ I forced myself to calm down. ‘Anyway, I’m alive.’

‘It sucks about your wife.’

Interesting reaction. ‘Most people say they’re sorry.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She was teasing me, I think, but not unkindly.

‘We’d already split up.’ Three years from falling in love to divorce, via marriage, a baby, an affair and a scandal. And her PhD. We packed a lot in, in those days. We were young.

I looked at Greta for some sort of signal to go on. She was staring into space, face fixed in an expression of furious concentration.

With a shock, I remembered another piece of the puzzle. Her and Hagger. There was I, wallowing in pity for something that had happened seven years ago; her wounds were still wide open. She didn’t want to hear about me.

Greta and Hagger. An image flashed through my mind: glass snapping, blood on my fingers. Greta had been there, I knew now. She’d said—

‘Hagger’s death wasn’t an accident.’

She gave me a cool once-over. ‘What do you think?’

‘How about the plane crash?’

‘They said it was the fuel tank.’

‘And?’

‘I filled the tank. It was fine.’

‘You think someone was trying to cut us off? So no one could leave?’

‘Or they didn’t want you to make it.’

It was just as well I was lying down. Blood pounded in my skull, each spurt a jolt of pain. Strong enough to rupture the thin bone where I’d banged my head and spray all over the medical room’s clean white walls.

‘Someone at Zodiac?’

It was a silly question, and Greta’s expression let me know it.

‘Why would anyone want to kill me?’ I ransacked my memories, pulling them out frantically like clothes from a cupboard and leaving them scattered over the floor. Nothing fitted. I looked at Greta. ‘What have I forgotten?’

‘What did you know?’

Not nearly enough. ‘Was my bag on the plane?’

‘It’s in your room.’

I leaned up, wincing. ‘Could you do me a favour? There should be a brown hardback notebook inside. Can you bring it?’

She came back two minutes later. As she handed me the notebook, an envelope tucked inside it fell out. It slid off the bed before I could grab it.

‘I’ll get that,’ I said. But Greta had already bent down to pick it up. She read the address on the envelope and gave me a funny look.

‘Aren’t you too old to believe in Santa?’

I shrugged. ‘A man’s got to believe in something.’

I took the letter off her. Father Christmas, The North Pole, the address said.

‘Luke gave it to me. I think he expects me to hand-deliver it.’

‘We’re five hundred miles from the pole.’

I pulled a face. ‘Next you’ll be saying Father Christmas doesn’t exist.’

‘Of course he does. But the elves drowned because of global warming.’

‘Who’s going to make the presents?’

Greta flicked back one of her braids. ‘That’s what happens when you fuck the planet. No presents.’

Abruptly, she checked her watch and headed for the door. No apology, no goodbye. That’s Greta.

‘Where do I start?’ I asked.

She didn’t stop, but she said something as she walked out. It sounded like, ‘Trust no one.’

Kennedy came back.

‘I’ve got to go up to Vitangelsk with Eastman,’ he said. ‘Can’t be helped.’ He got two pill containers out of a cabinet and put them on the side. ‘Paracetamol. Take two every four hours to keep the pain away. And this one’s diazepam. Memory loss, coming out of a coma, it can all be a bit stressful. If you feel panicky, diazepam will calm you down a treat. And don’t overexert yourself,’ he added.

‘Next time, I’m going private,’ I said. But he was out too quick to hear.

I picked up the pill jar and put it right against my eye. The plastic showed me a fisheyed, amber world. A dangerously distorted place.

The panic and the pain were almost unbearable. I twisted off the cap and looked down the barrel of the jar. Four white pills, lonely at the bottom. Obviously I wasn’t the only one at Zodiac feeling stressed out.

Why would anyone want to kill me?

I hurled the jar away from me. It rolled across the benchtop, spilling a couple of the pills. Kennedy hadn’t said anything about staying in bed. I got up, clenching my teeth against the pain, and went to my room to get dressed. One of the things I’d been happy to forget is how depressing that room is. I didn’t stay longer than I had to. I went to the mess to get a cup of tea.

Mid-morning, Zodiac’s a quiet place — like a resort hotel on the day the guests change over. I could hear Danny in the kitchen washing up, a stereo playing somewhere. Everyone else was in the field. I settled into a chair by the window with my journal and Hagger’s lab book.

Someone said, I can’t remember who, that everyone who keeps a journal secretly hopes someone else will read it. Like a murderer wanting the police to catch him — however much you pretend you’re writing for you alone, your most intimate thoughts, you can’t let go the hope that one day, someone will care and know who you were.

I never thought of my journal that way. I started it when Luke was small, because I was terrified at how much I was already forgetting. If I did think someone else might read it one day, I never imagined that the someone would be me. But there I was, reading through what I’d written, like a technician reloading data on to a computer that’s crashed. It felt strange. Even things I’d written just a couple of days ago didn’t feel like me any more. We put so much faith in words, but they’re flimsy, inadequate things. Even what I’m writing right now, if I read it back next week, it won’t seem the same.

But this morning, it was enough to jog a few memories. By the time I’d reread it, the only thing missing was an explanation.

Why did Hagger bring me here? I wrote that on Sunday. And, the question I hadn’t written, but which might as well have been at the top of every page: Why did he die?

I put down my journal, grabbed myself another cup of tea and opened Hagger’s notebook. Maybe that would have some answers.

I saw the quote on the inside cover again.

Some Say The World Began In Fire, Some Say In Ice.

I was pretty sure the quote was wrong. In the Robert Frost poem, the world’s supposed to end in fire (or ice). His colleagues would say it was typical of Hagger’s ego to rewrite a great poet, but I got the joke.

It’s never easy reading someone else’s lab book: it’s much more private than a diary. After all, there’s always a chance someone someday might be interested in the diary. Hagger’s lab book was mostly an assortment of graphs and tables, like a PowerPoint presentation with the interesting bits cut out. No context, just lists of numbers that looked like sample labels to me, and probably like a phone directory to anyone else.