Now, I don't think I'm in any position to start doling out life advice, especially considering the horrors that were so shortly to follow, but I do feel qualified to tell you this:

Don't ever drink and sauna.

That's definitely a mistake.

The next morning, curled up in the foetal position on my skinned reindeer, I felt like death itself would be a mercy to me.

I was wrong, of course, but that's definitely how it felt at the time.

My hangover hit me hard.

My head was mouldy, over-ripe fruit, squeezed into a rusting bucket then run over by a car.

My mind was the sad funeral of my drunken invincibility, my anxiety tuned up to the max.

I'd found a dead body. A man I'd just spoken to. Then I'd cavorted in the possible place of his death.

I was in a freezing wasteland of terror, not meant for human life; miles from civilisation, miles from safety.

There was nothing on this icy desert to support human life. No sunlight, no animals, no plants. Not even insects.

Without those ottercopters, the shipped-in food and generators, we'd all die within minutes.

There was so much that could go wrong, and the consequences, if it did, were massive.

My instincts screamed at me that I was going to die out here, and I realised they were probably right. Playing at inspectors with Ruben—what was I thinking? This wasn't a game. People had died.

And what if I died?

No one would care.

I doubted they'd even come for my body. I'd just lie, frozen in my death pose in my Perry Sport, forever, like those grim neon corpsicles up Everest.

I whimpered, sweated and shivered in my sleeping bag on my freezing, uncomfortable bed, floundering in a whirlpool of rabid self-pity.

I was painfully thirsty, but couldn't bear to move. The hostile H2O walls, ceiling and floor mocked me like the ocean mocked the Ancient Mariner.

Unpleasant hallucinations kept flashing into my mind like lucid dreams, each one accompanied by a wave of cramping nausea.

Sam's bent blue fingers in the snow. His pale, hard thighs. The dusting of snow glittering on his skin, as if he was salt encrusted.

Flashes of Ruben too, in the sauna, mixed up with my images of Sam. The hair on his chest. His sweating arms and long thin fingers. The uncomfortable scratch of his beard on my chin.

It was a freakish cocktail of hot and frozen flesh, all jumbling up together.

I tried to push both out of my mind.

When Suzie came in and started shouting at me, it only added another layer to my nightmarish imaginings.

"I can't believe you're still in bed, Jennie!"

I could hear her but couldn't see her, my head still tucked inside my sleeping bag, a gross little nylon pupa.

"The expeditions start in 30 minutes. What's wrong with you? And what's with the ghosting on me yesterday? I was messaging you all day! You're worse than Ruben! I have the lamest team out here," she whined.

"I'm sorry, Suzie," I said, filling the cave of my sleeping bag with sickly alcohol fumes. "I'm ill. I need to stay in bed. I can't go on an expedition today."

"That's just typical! You haven't pulled your weight at all on this trip. I know you didn't go to see the penguins."

I flinched as her voice got closer to my head. She carried on shouting.

"And don't think just because that picture of you and Ruben at the Pole got some traction yesterday, it means you've done your bit. You haven't! You need to sort out your GlobalGreen stuff and fast, because I'm sick of your negativity dragging me down!"

I lay in silence, eyes closed, for a long while after she stopped yelling, unsure if she had left. It was hard to tell with the curtains for doors, as you couldn't hear them slamming.

I craned my ears for noises from the rest of the hotel, but could hear nothing. The ice had an empty ring to it that absorbed a lot of sound.

I had no idea what time it was. My phone was still plugged into my locker.

I was sweating greasily, but my toes and nose were going numb with cold. I desperately needed to both pee and drink.

And what did Suzie mean by That picture of you and Ruben got traction?

That did not sound good.

I moaned, my temples trapped in an angle-grinder.

I finally managed to get myself into my boots, coat and outdoor trousers and waddle pathetically to the locker room, each step—and the cold—feeling like it was hacking at me with an axe.

The place was deserted, except staff. The expeditions had clearly already left.

Thank God.

I fumbled in my locker for my credit card, bought a bottle of water from the vending machine, and retrieved my phone.

Then I went to the ladies toilets and barricaded myself into the end cubicle, ready to settle into its privacy and relative warmth for as long as I could.

I was so hungover I couldn't even bear to look at a screen and piss at the same time. I rested my aching, sinusy face in my hands, groaning.

I sat there with my pants down for ages before I finally switched my phone on.

Yikes. Seventeen messages, and twelve missed calls. Suzie had been trying hard to contact me.

I purposefully ignored the calls and texts, wanting no reminder of yesterday's penguin failure and Suzie's anger about it.

Instead, I flicked straight onto Instagram to see Ruben's picture.

I had a notification telling me I had been tagged in a photo, and that I had a follow request.

No, wait.

Seventeen follow requests.

Oh, shit.

I clicked on the tag notification, my heart—and port-flavoured bile—heavy in my mouth.

And there it was.

My face.

Massive, and clear as day, in one of Ruben's pictures.

It was a group shot, Ruben in the middle, me and the lady scientist at either side, the pole at the Pole before us, an aurora I hadn't noticed behind.

Discussing climate change at the Pole, Ruben had written beneath it, with Glaciologist Ruth Ginsburg from the US South Pole Research Station and @jenniemairijaimeson from Scotland, a professional eco-campaigner for @GlobalGreen.

#globalwarmingisreal #impeachTrump #actnow #savetheearth #antarcticwinter #Antarctica #polarexpedition #polarhike #baggedtwopoles #traveltheworld #thereintheworld #RubenFelix

I remembered Ruben taking it, though I didn't remember talking about climate change, only crab sandwiches.

I'd been pretty casual about being in the photo at the time as it was so incredibly dark, but Ruben had done some sort of trickery with the exposure that meant our pale faces were as bright as day.

And he'd tagged me in it.

Not just me.

GlobalGreen.

The picture had 1,753 likes and 62 comments.

I was fucked.

I groaned, letting my head fall onto the tiled toilet wall.

Plus, professional eco-campaigner? I never said I was that at GlobalGreen! I was a communications sub-officer. There was a world—and about six pay grades—of difference!

Ruben had taken my lie, and inflated it to planet size. What the hell was my old boss at GlobalGreen going to say when he saw this? What the hell would he do?

Could I get into legal trouble? Could they claim back the cost of the trip? A hundred thousand pounds, that woman on the boat had said. I didn't have that. I would never have that.

If they saw this—

Wait.

Had GlobalGreen already seen the picture? Had they already tried to contact me?

Maybe those twelve missed calls weren't from Suzie after all.

Hand trembling, I gingerly pressed on the green phone icon, with its censorious red 12.

My sick stomach dipped like I was back in the Drake Passage, on that wave-battered boat The Cleaver.

Turned out I was right. None of those missed calls were from Suzie.

None of them.

But they weren't from GlobalGreen, either.

Every single one was from Paulo.