The Ice Child by Elizabeth Cooke Page B

a face into the receiver. “Listen, they found him.”
    “Who?”
    “Who d’you think? Marshall.”
    Suddenly, Jo was wide awake. “Doug Marshall?”
    “Your very man. Frozen like a fish finger, but alive.”
    Thank you, God , Jo thought, and surprised herself at the rush of emotion. “And his guide?” she asked.
    “Marshall broke a leg,” Gina told her. “It was the Inuit guy that got through. Big hero stuff. They picked Marshall up an hour ago.”
    Jo stared out through the curtains that didn’t meet. She saw nothing but cloud, the low sky yellowed by the light of the city.
    “Are you there?” Gina said.
    “I’m here.” She swung her legs out of bed. “When’s he due in England?”
    She could almost hear Gina smile. “I’m going home,” she said. “Chase your own story, girlfriend.”
    The night was beautiful.
    John thought that he had probably never seen a night so beautiful, and then, slipping as he came around the corner of Trinity Lane, just past the gates of Caius, he thought that probably it wasn’t so much that it was beautiful, but that he was drunk.
    He steadied himself on the wall, and ahead of him she stopped and looked back.
    “Got a stone in my shoe,” he said.
    Catherine Takkiruq laughed softly, not fooled.
    “Hey,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Come here.”
    He could hardly make her face out in the shadows, but he could see that hair. She had taken off the fabric band as they had come out of the bar, and in the streetlights he had seen the blue sheen of it.
    “Stand up and walk straight,” she murmured, half laughing, half reproving.
    He did as he was told. Or the best he could.
    They emerged at last in his road and stopped by the door to his flat. He gazed up at the sky and saw the stars between scudding clouds.
    “I’m going home from here,” Catherine said. She held out her hand.
    “Going,” he repeated. He looked down at the hand, shook it with a sense of ridicule. He wanted to kiss her, not shake her hand. “You can’t leave me,” he said. “I was going to show you the Franklin stuff.”
    “Maybe another time,” she said.
    A little bolt of panic shot through him. She would turn up this street, and he would never see her again. “I never thanked you properly,” he said. “For the news and everything.”
    This time she did laugh, out loud. “You thanked me twenty times, John,” she said, “and bought me four drinks. You thanked me all night, every time someone bought you a drink. Now I go home, okay?”
    He caught her arm as she turned. “I’m going there,” he told her, abruptly.
    “Where?” she asked.
    “Where you come from. King William Island.”
    She prized his fingers from her wrist. “I come from Arctic Bay,” she reminded him. “And I haven’t lived there since I was six years old, remember?”
    “I’m going there,” he repeated. “My secret. Now you know it.”
    She leaned against the wall. “Thanks for telling me.”
    “No,” he said, trying to sober up. “Thank you . Your dad, and all that. E-mailing you to tell me about Dad’s rescue before the papers got it.”
    “That makes twenty-one times,” she observed. But she was not impatient at all. “François is Dad’s cousin.”
    “Yeah. Brave man. Saved Dad’s life.”
    “Maybe,” she said. She looked at the ground, smiling to herself.
    He straightened up. “Come upstairs just a second,” he said. “Just want to show you. I know all about your country. All those places. Got a whole mass of stuff. Just a minute, that’s all. Then I’ll come with you to your door, see you home. Promise.”
    She paused. “One minute,” she murmured. “Okay.”
    She followed him up the two flights of stairs. When he got to his door, he looked back at her, his heart making a lazy little flip of desire. He fumbled with the lock. Then the door opened from the other side.
    Amy was standing there.
    She looked him over, then Catherine. She flushed deeply at the sight of the other girl. Then she