1

IRIS BELLINGHAM RECLINED in her camping chair, the canvas shade above her doing nothing to diminish the heat of the mid-afternoon Hawaiian sun. With her eyes closed and the sun baking her from the outside in, she found it easy to imagine that she was on a beach somewhere else on the archipelago, rather than at work. It wasn't that Iris didn't love her job. She loved it so much that it didn't feel like a job at all, but after a few weeks of crunching data in a research lab that was so nondescript it could be anywhere in the world, she was craving the outdoors.

Iris worked as a volcanologist and was well aware of how lucky she was to earn a living doing something so niche but so rewarding. All the data she helped to collect and analyse delivered predictability to some of the most volatile places on earth. The fact was that the better she and her colleagues were at forecasting, the safer it made these places for the people who lived there. People relied on her and she was good at what she did.

Today, Mount Kilauea wasn't causing Iris any problems. It had been emitting steam and gases for a few weeks, but the level of activity had been reducing steadily and they had concluded that there was a low probability of anything else happening in the near future. The lack of activity had made her restless and unable to resist the call of the outdoors any longer, so she had suggested a field trip to her younger colleague, Dylan. With the imminent danger of an eruption well and truly off the cards, she wanted to show him where the data they spent all day looking at came from. And so they had spent most of the day watching the instruments that were installed around the caldera of the volcano from the safety of their laptop screens in a small clearing. The canvas sails strung between the spindly trees sheltered them from the sun or the rain, depending on the day. There hadn't been many rainy days in the few weeks she'd been on The Big Island, but when it rained, it really rained.

‘Shall we call it a day? If we go now, we can catch the tide.' Dylan had recently started studying at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and had been Iris's sidekick for the duration of her visit.

‘Dylan, it's almost as if you're not interested in watching the seismometer any more.' She'd been hoping that they might feel some minor tremors, a common occurrence around active volcanos, so that he could get a sense of the magnitude of what they had been looking at for all these weeks on their computer screens. As it was, it had been a very quiet day on that score and he was bored.

‘Iris, the waves are calling to me.' He was from land-locked Minnesota and had signed up for surfing lessons the minute he arrived in Hawaii. Iris loved the water so had been happy to tag along with him a few times to nearby Kahaluu beach, where there was a surf school. The water was fierce compared with what she was used to. The beaches she'd holidayed on in the UK had waves which were far more subdued unless there was a storm. Here, she'd been astounded at the size of the breakers, but Dylan didn't seem to be deterred. Perhaps because he had nothing to compare it to. Surfing here was far too intense, but at the end of a day in the lab, a dip in the shallows had been most welcome. Then she'd wait on the beach with a good book.

‘Okay,' she said, good-naturedly. ‘I think we can safely say nothing's going to happen while we're away.'

‘I don't think anything's going to happen, period,' Dylan said. He was fresh out of graduate school and hadn't been in the field long enough to notice the nuances of the data. Today, he was probably right, but Iris had seen his impatience flare over the past few weeks and knew that meant he would likely miss something important. But that was what she was there for, and why he was with her: to learn from her.

‘Not today. That's all we're saying.'

‘Yeah, okay, Iris. I hear you,' he said with a lazy smile, that if she'd been fifteen, maybe ten years younger, she'd have had trouble resisting.

‘Let's pack up then.'

They collected up their small amount of equipment, putting it into foam-lined cases that made it easy and safe to transport, folded up their chairs and took a last look around before they hiked back the short distance to the truck.

‘You going to try surfing today?' He was teasing. He thought it was funny that she was wary of the waves and asked her every time they went to the beach.

‘Nope, I'm happy watching,' she said with a grin. ‘Not you, obviously. The really good surfers.'

‘Ouch,' he said, hitting his hand on his chest. ‘It kills me that you're not impressed by my skills.'

Iris threw back her head and laughed. ‘You're in the wrong place if you're looking to be the best surfer out there.'

‘Don't I know it,' he said ruefully.

‘Anyway, this might be my last surf trip. I'm probably going to move on now that Kilauea's calmed down.'

‘Ah, Iris. Man, I'll miss you.'

It warmed her heart that they'd struck up a friendship that mattered to him as much as it did to her. He was the little brother she'd never had.

They loaded their equipment into the truck and Dylan got into the driver's seat, as had become their habit. Iris didn't enjoy driving on the narrow tracks around the caldera, or the wrong side of the road for that matter.

‘I'll be back if she so much as rumbles again, but I can't stay when there's nothing happening.'

‘There's nothing happening anywhere, except maybe Indonesia and that's the back of beyond.'

‘It's beautiful, but it's not the same,' Iris admitted. There were so many places she'd visited that were miles, sometimes days away from civilisation, and most of the volcanoes in Indonesia that showed any sign of activity tended to be those ones. Dylan was right. It wasn't often she could enjoy what any of these places offered because typically the volcano was all there was. ‘We can't all be lucky enough to be monitoring a volcano one minute and lounging on the beach the next.'

‘Okay, you've just reminded me I live in the most amazing place on earth,' Dylan said with a grin, throwing a huge dust cloud up as he brought the truck to a screeching halt in the car park at Kahaluu beach. It was a perfect afternoon. The sun was glinting off the waves and even though the waves were huge, the water looked inviting.

‘With the best job in the world,' Iris added.

‘It's different for you. You get to see all the action. I haven't even seen an eruption yet.'

‘Stay here long enough and you will. Kilauea is one of the reliable ones. Don't get impatient and leave. The key to seeing an eruption is patience.'

Dylan looked at her sullenly.

‘Come on,' she said, jumping out of the truck and then reaching behind her seat for her bag.

‘I'm the only volcanologist in the world who hasn't seen an eruption,' he said.

‘Oh, come on. There are plenty of you. And can you really call yourself a volcanologist yet?' she teased.

He laughed, his eyebrows lifted in surprise and glee. ‘You're brutal!'

‘You know I'm right,' Iris said, nudging into him as they walked side by side along the beach towards the surf hire shop. ‘Want me to tell you the story of my first eruption?'

‘Again?' he asked, nudging her back and grinning.

‘Oh, shut up. I might be old and boring, but I'm right.'

‘You're not boring.'

‘Thanks.'

Iris waited outside the shop while Dylan went in and hired a surfboard, then they dumped their stuff in a pile on the sand and walked down towards the shoreline.

‘I might be tempted in for a dip,' Iris said, letting the shallows wash over her bare feet. ‘It might be the last time.'

Dylan groaned. ‘You're killing me, Iris. Yes, get in here.'

‘You go ahead. I need to change.'

He ran into the surf with his board while Iris went back to where they'd left their things and wrangled with her swimming costume while she tried to preserve her dignity under a towel. After the exertion of that, she sat on the sand for a couple of minutes, watching Dylan. He'd improved quite a lot even in the few weeks she'd been coming to the beach with him. When she'd first arrived, he'd still been at the stage of it being hit and miss whether he'd be able to stand up or not, whereas now, he was standing up almost as soon as he caught a wave and for a good few seconds every time.

Before she headed down into the water, Iris took her phone out to check her messages. The local time was ten hours behind the UK, so she and her family were like ships in the night most of the time. They kept in touch with each other through WhatsApp. She and her parents and her older twin brothers had a family chat and messaged every day with news, or in the case of her brother Felix, endless links to random things on TikTok. He was a secondary school teacher, well-versed in all the latest social media trends, and spent far too much time on TikTok as far as the rest of the family were concerned. Finn was the quieter of the brothers and rarely shared anything about his life voluntarily, but he was the brother Iris spoke to more often on a one-to-one basis. He was a brilliant listener, whereas Felix was immediately uncomfortable if anyone shared anything too personal with him. He liked to keep things light.

There were eight unread messages in the family chat, as well as fourteen on a group chat she had with some of the other volcanologists she worked with regularly. Scrolling through, she saw that there were high levels of volcanic activity in south-west Iceland. She clicked on a link from one of her colleagues that took her to the Icelandic Met Office, where she found more of the technical information behind the headline.

‘I thought you were coming in?' Dylan stuck the end of his surfboard into the sand next to her. Had she been sitting here that long? It was easy to get distracted once she started looking at data.

‘Where's that?' he asked, looking over her shoulder and dripping all over her at the same time.

‘Hey!' She swatted him away. ‘It's in Iceland. I don't think it's a volcano. It sounds like something else.'

‘Could be anything in that part of the world. The place is one giant rift.' He lay down, using one forearm as a pillow and the other to shade his eyes from the sun.

‘Mmm.'

He lifted his arm up enough to look at her. ‘That's where you're going next, isn't it?'

‘It's tempting. It could be huge. People live there. It's one of the most populated parts of Iceland. It's where all the tourism is centred. I don't remember an Icelandic event being this close to a populated area before.'

Iris's phone rang. She glanced at the screen and answered before it could ring twice.

‘Jay.' She was aiming for detached, but it was difficult to keep the excitement out of her voice.

‘Hey, Iris,' he said lazily.

‘You're calling about Iceland?' The best she could hope for was to take some of the wind out of his sails.

‘Oh.' It had worked. ‘You've already heard?'

‘There's not much point being the world expert in predictive seismic data if I'm not across these things, is there?' She was making herself cringe. Not that any of it wasn't true, but she didn't make a habit of blowing her own trumpet. Jay's constant one-upmanship forced her into making an exception to that rule. Technically, he was her boss, although he was not as qualified as her. He just happened to be in an administrative position of power. They'd been at university together when they were both studying for their Master's degrees and had had an unfortunate — from Iris's perspective at least — kiss which, amongst other things, had led to an unfortunate few weeks of Iris having to avoid him, followed by an unfortunate rest of the year while he constantly undermined Iris to make himself shine. She knew it was because she'd rejected him, but it still surprised her how much of an arse he could be. And the most unfortunate thing of all was that now he was her boss, he thought he'd won the battle for supremacy that had been going on between them for over ten years.

‘Right. So you're heading to Iceland, then?'

‘Of course. I'm on the next plane to LA.' It was a white lie. She'd aim to be on the very next plane she could be, but the important thing was for Jay not to realise she was only a couple of minutes ahead of him with the whole situation. If it wasn't her dream job, she'd have been out of his research facility by now, but volcanology was a small world and even if she got a job at a different place, she'd no doubt still come across Jay at some point.

‘I assume you've already booked hotels and transport in Iceland?' he asked.

She hadn't and it would be tricky to once she was on the move, but somehow it seemed like an admission of weakness to ask him for any kind of help. ‘Yes, thanks.'

‘Okay. Well, give me a call when you get there. Let me know how things are looking and I can organise whatever else you need.'

‘Thanks.' She rang off before he could say anything else.

‘Who was that poor sucker?' Dylan asked.

‘My boss.'

‘You talk to your boss like that?' His eyes were wide. ‘I've never heard you talk to anyone like that. Man, your boss!'

‘Well, we were at uni together so he might be my boss, but he's not interested enough in the science to have bothered pursuing a career in the field. He's my boss in as much as he runs the facility where I'm based in the UK.'

‘Sounded more like you were telling him what was what, not the other way around.'

‘We go back a long way,' was all she was prepared to say on the subject. ‘We were never friends, though.'

‘Don't worry, I worked that much out,' Dylan said with a grin. ‘Makes me feel like a lucky son-of-a-gun to be buddies with you.'

‘Oh, shut up.' Iris laughed and roughed his hair, which was full of salt and sand.

‘Want a ride to the airport?'

‘Yes, please.' She was going to miss Dylan with his easy banter, but they'd cross paths again, she was sure.

‘You got it. I'll take my board back and we can go get your stuff packed up.'

While Dylan jogged back to the surf shop with his board, Iris stood and faced the sea, committing the magnificence of it to memory. Hawaii was incredible, and she was going to miss it. Going from the almost guaranteed sunshine to the cold wilderness of an Icelandic spring was going to be a shock.