20

IRIS BEGAN WORK on her report, the note from Siggi safely out of sight and out of mind. For now. Hopefully by focusing on work, when she did take a breath to think about everything, the right answer would present itself. She knew she ought to give him the chance to explain, as he'd asked. But she needed to have built some defences back before she could do that. If he came to her now, she'd break again. The memory of it all was too fresh and even though he might be sorry about what happened, it didn't necessarily mean that he didn't still believe the things he'd said.

She logged into the portal Bjarkey had set up for her so that she could get access to the new data they were logging from the extra seismometers and checked her own seismometer data as well. The data from all the units was showing heightened activity; more frequency of events, closer together. It didn't tally with what the traditional data was suggesting, but that was the whole point; her own data should be more accurate. But although she was confident in her data, it was as yet unproven, which was exactly why she was there. She needed to go back to Hraunvik to see for herself.

‘Hi Bjarkey.'

‘Iris, I was about to call you. I have been looking at your data feed. It looks as if something may be starting.'

‘I thought the same.'

‘We should go to Hraunvik. I have spoken to Emil, and he wants us to take two others from the team. Also, a team from the civil defence department will meet us there. We will collect you in half an hour.'

Iris felt butterflies in her stomach. This was it. All her work was about to come to fruition. If they could see evidence that her data was flagging up that something was happening ahead of it being picked up by the traditional methods, that was what she'd been waiting for.

All thoughts of Siggi vanished as she focused entirely on gathering her things together. If she'd listened to Jay, she'd be at the airport now and two years of work and research would have been wasted. Whatever happened, she knew she was leaving British Geology Labs. This was proof that Jay was wrong, and no one there seemed to see that what he was doing was undermining everything they were working for.

Half an hour later, she was ready and waiting outside the hotel. The vehicle that pulled up was a massive all-terrain vehicle with huge tyres and a high wheelbase.

‘Iris! Climb in the back!' Bjarkey called out of the window.

She threw her stuff in the footwell and climbed in next to a younger man, who smiled and introduced himself with a firm handshake as Kári.

‘And this is Aron,' Bjarkey said, indicating the driver. He said hello and waved, catching Iris's eye in the rearview mirror.

‘This is exciting,' said Kári. ‘I have never been to a site to see what it looks like before the eruption happens.'

‘We saw cracks beginning to appear a few days ago,' said Iris. ‘I'm expecting to see more of that, maybe some signs of magma beginning to show.'

‘They are meeting this afternoon to decide on whether to begin evacuating the town,' Bjarkey said. ‘As soon as we meet with the civil defence people, they will be reporting back. We should head to the site of the fissures we saw yesterday first.'

‘Good plan,' said Iris.

It was early afternoon, but the brooding skies made it feel as if it were more like dusk. It felt like an omen, and despite Iris's excitement from a professional point of view, she couldn't help but worry about the future of the people who lived in the town. This part of the Reykjanes peninsula hadn't seen any volcanic activity for hundreds of years. Yes, it was the land of ice and fire and there were active volcanoes relatively nearby, but these lava tubes, which she was predicting were going to fill with magma and burst through the surface, were an unknown occurrence. No one had expected that.

Bjarkey spoke in Icelandic to Aron, and Iris could tell she was giving him directions to the house where Iris's seismometer was sited. As soon as they arrived on the outskirts of the town, it was apparent that Iris's data was correct. The surface of the road had bulged in places, with cracks beginning to appear in others. That was alarming enough, but when they pulled up outside the house, that was where everything took on a whole different feeling. The house had essentially split from its neighbour. On either side of the fissure that had appeared a few days ago, the ground was now at entirely different levels. One house appeared to have sunk down into the earth and leaned away from the house it had once been attached to.

‘Oh my god,' Iris said. ‘Surely they're not still living there?'

‘I hope not,' said Aron. ‘As soon as the civil defence team see this they will be sure to order an evacuation of the whole town. If the main road becomes impassable, it will be impossible for anyone to leave unless they are in a vehicle like this one.'

‘Come on, let's get out and take some measurements,' said Bjarkey.

Aron fetched some camera equipment from a case in the boot and took pictures of the fissure while Kári held a ruler across it, and then vertically to record the movement of one side of the fissure versus the other.

While they were busy, Iris knocked on the door of the house where her seismometer was. There was no response. Taking a deep breath, she knocked on the door of the neighbouring house. The one where Siggi's daughter lived, as far as she knew. Thankfully, no one answered. She could only assume they must have left, which is exactly what she would do if her house was sitting right on top of a fissure like this. Iris felt a wave of relief knowing that Siggi's daughter was away from this immediate danger, but hoped they'd left the town as well as the house.

Iris sat on the steps of the house, opened her laptop, and balanced it on her knees. She checked the data that was coming from the seismometer just metres away from her. Almost immediately, there was a spike in the line of data. Normally, if you saw a spike like that, on the frequencies a normal seismometer monitored, you felt the tremor as it was being recorded. But this was amazing to see. The frequency she was looking at was so low that it couldn't be felt at the surface. But less than a minute later, they all felt the earth shift slightly. There was a groaning sound as it did so, and when Iris looked at the IMO data feed, she could see the spike that corresponded with what they'd felt.

‘It's incredible to be literally feeling the data on the screen in real life,' she said to Bjarkey.

Bjarkey nodded. ‘I remember the first time I went out in the field. We were monitoring the Eyjafjallaj?kull volcano, you know the one that closed the airspace in most of Europe because of the ash?'

‘I do remember. I was an undergraduate.'

‘We did not have very good monitoring of that specific volcano because it had not erupted for at least a hundred and fifty years. I had just started working at the IMO and we began noticing seismic activity in the area and a small group of us went to see for ourselves, to monitor it more closely. The earthquakes were coming so regularly, it was crazy. It was the first time I had ever experienced that.'

‘What's going to happen here? I mean, how often do towns need evacuating?'

Bjarkey shook her head. ‘It is very rare. I do not remember it before. People know where the danger lies from a volcano. But this is different. No one knew that there were ancient lava tubes underneath this town. And we couldn't have predicted that they would fill with magma. No one would have settled a town here if they had known any of that.'

At that moment, a similar all-terrain vehicle arrived. Two men and a woman climbed out, wearing high-vis jackets. Aron spoke to them in Icelandic and showed them the fissure. Not that it needed pointing out; the state of the houses spelled out what they were dealing with. It only took moments for them to be on their way again.

‘They are putting the evacuation notice out,' said Aron. ‘They are giving everyone forty-eight hours to leave.'

‘Oh my god,' Iris whispered. ‘It's horrible.'

Bjarkey sat on the step beside her. ‘It is. But everyone will be safe.'

‘The town will be lost.'

‘Yes, possibly. But everyone will be safe. That is the only thing that matters.'

And of course that was true. But Iris could only imagine how awful it would be to lose her home, if she had one, to a disaster like this. To be uprooted and have to start again somewhere else. It was unthinkable, but it happened to people across the world all the time. Because of other kinds of natural disasters or having to flee from war or oppression. But here, it felt almost personal for Iris. The scientist in her had fallen for Iceland, and her love of volcanology was at odds with the effect it was going to have on these people, but at the same time, she was in awe of the magnificence of what was happening here. It was nature at its most brutal, and it would show itself to be most spectacular in the next couple of days.

Once they'd finished measuring at the house, they packed up and drove along to the next location. The street where Iris and Bjarkey had seen the first fissure on the road surface. They were expecting this to be significantly larger now, especially since they'd seen evidence of other cracks on the way in. But it was shocking to find a long portion of the road had sunk into the ground by at least six inches. Now that they were standing on the open road, it was clear that the cracks were following a line, north-east to south-west, slightly skewed from the north-south that they'd predicted, but the extra seismometers were still providing useful data.

‘If this fissure opens up, it'll reach the sea,' said Aron.

They all knew what that meant. The sea would rapidly cool the lava and could produce toxic gases. It wasn't only the physical threat of magma that was a problem for people in the vicinity.

‘Come on,' said Bjarkey. ‘Let's survey all the areas we looked at the other day for comparative purposes and then we'll get back to base.'

They spent another couple of hours in the town, never wandering too far from where they left the vehicle, just in case.

‘Okay,' Aron said, as another tremor hit. ‘Let's go.'

‘Will we come back again after the eruption starts?' asked Kári.

‘No, it will be too unpredictable. We will use drones to monitor from a safe distance,' Aron explained.

It began raining on their drive back to Reykjavik. Despite the dusk, once they were north of Hraunvik, they could see steam coming from the ground where the icy rain was hitting hot patches of earth.

‘It's incredible,' said Iris. ‘It's almost mapping out where the activity is bubbling close to the surface.'

She'd seen steam coming from the ground before, from small bubbling pools of water that you could sometimes see from the road when you were driving around. It was commonplace. But this was different. It was almost a curtain of steam rising from the ground over some distance. It was incredible to see.

The twinkling lights of Reykjavik were a welcoming sight.

‘Come into the office tomorrow, Iris,' Bjarkey suggested. ‘We're only going to brief the rest of the team now, and then call it a day.'

‘Okay, thanks.' She was itching to add today's data into her report. Then it would almost be finished, bar the conclusion which she couldn't complete until after the eruption began. And now that she was back in the town, Siggi was on her mind again. She needed to talk to him.

She climbed out of the truck and said goodbye to Bjarkey and the others, grabbed her coat and bag and slammed the door shut, waving as they drove off.

‘Iris!'

She turned to see Gudrun and Olafur walking towards her.

‘Hi,' she said warmly, pleased to see them both.

‘Where have you been?' Gudrun asked.

‘To Hraunvik. There's some increased activity, so it looks as if they're going to evacuate the town.'

‘Oh my goodness,' said Gudrun. ‘It's so awful. The poor people.'

‘It is terrible,' said Olafur. ‘People will have to leave their homes, but better that than not knowing what is coming.'

‘That's true,' said Iris. ‘And where are you off to?'

‘The open mic night. Ned is playing tonight. You should come with us!' Gudrun said enthusiastically.

‘Oh, I don't think so, but thanks for the invitation.'

‘Siggi might be there. The Northern Lights trip is cancelled tonight, isn't it?' Gudrun asked Olafur.

Iris wasn't sure if the fact the Siggi was going to be there was a good thing or not. Seeing Siggi at the open mic night wasn't exactly conducive to being able to have a proper talk. It might be awkward having to spend the evening together.

Olafur shook his head. ‘Siggi has gone camping tonight so that he can surf at dawn.'

Gudrun looked at Iris again with renewed enthusiasm. ‘Come on! We can wait for you. Ned is always amazing.'

Iris had yet to see Ned Nokes in the flesh, and she had enjoyed the open mic night last time she'd been. Knowing that Siggi wouldn't be there made the decision easier. ‘Okay, that'd be great. But don't wait for me. I can catch you up.'

‘We will save you a seat!' Gudrun said, as they carried on walking. ‘Be quick!'

Iris could hear Olafur say something to Gudrun that sounded like he was perhaps telling her not to be so bossy. She smiled. It was so nice to be part of a community, even in the smallest of ways.

She showered and blasted her hair with the drier so she wouldn't freeze, then ran a tiny blob of hair oil onto her fingers and through her curls to de-frizz them. Choosing jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt with a short-sleeved one with Guns 'n' Roses emblazoned on the front layered over the top, she felt excited about going out.

She picked up her phone, half-expecting to see a message from Siggi. There was nothing. But then, she needed to make the next move, so it shouldn't have been a surprise, and it made her heart sink a little that the misunderstanding between them still wasn't resolved.

Thanks for your note. I do want to talk. I hear you have gone camping. Are you mad?! Let me know when you're back x

She felt better having made contact. After everything that had happened today, the sting of how she'd felt that morning had dulled. Hopefully, the tone of her message would tell Siggi that she was ready to listen.