4

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Siggi had opened up the Iceland Adventures office and for once, wished it was one of the days when Jonas couldn't stay away from the place. He still hadn't had chance to ask him whether it was okay to accompany Iris after all, now that they'd established her credentials. And he was itching to see for himself how things were developing.

When he'd come back to the office the day before, after taking Iris to the hotel, he picked up googling her where he'd left off. Reading more about her had left him feeling somewhere between impressed and intimidated. Not only was she a volcanologist, she was one of the leading ones in the field of using data for predicting what might happen in the course of an eruption. There was a lot more to it than that, but Siggi had skimmed over the more technical aspects of her career in favour of finding out as much as he could about the rest of her life.

Most of the information available to him online was to do with her work. Papers she'd written, news reports where she'd given a quote, her work history on some random Who's Who in volcanology website, but hardly anything about the rest of her life. He knew she was thirty-three and came from a place called Cheltenham in the middle of the UK. He found out she went to university in Lancaster and that since then she'd worked at British Geology Labs. She had a Facebook page people tagged her on but that she hardly ever updated, and when she did, it was about a volcano. He certainly didn't feel the need to contact his friend at the IMO to clarify anything. There was no doubt that Iris Bellingham knew more than most people about what she might be getting into by requesting a trip to a volatile part of the country.

Siggi felt a kind of affinity with Iris. He was nowhere near having a work ethic like hers, but he assumed that to travel around the world, she must want to do that regardless of the volcanos involved. She was looking at data, so he wondered why she was the one who had to come out to the Reykjanes peninsula, unless she wanted to.

Thanks to his own wanderlust nature, he had a terrible track record with relationships and he wondered whether that might be the same for Iris. He always began by being super-invested, but when things got more serious, he ended up leaving. It was never how he planned things would go, but that was the way they went. The day before, he'd been amazed by the expression on Embla's face while she'd checked Iris into the hotel. He understood entirely why Embla was angry with him. He couldn't give her what she'd wanted, and he'd been honest with her about that, but accepted that from her perspective, the conversations hadn't been over when he'd upped and left for Thailand. The need to leave sometimes overwhelmed him to the point of almost paralysing him to do anything except flee. And it had never been the wrong choice, even if he felt the choice had been made for him.

Having established that all signs pointed to Iris being a workaholic, Siggi wanted to respond to her email before she turned up on the doorstep as he fully expected she would at any moment. He called Jonas.

‘Jonas, it's Siggi.'

‘Is everything okay?'

‘Sure. The email we had yesterday about the Reykjanes trip? The woman is a volcanologist. It seems legitimate.'

‘Ah, okay. When does she want to go out there?'

Siggi preempted Jonas offering his services by saying, ‘I told her I'd take her today, if it was okay with you.'

‘If you're sure. I can come in and cover the office this afternoon. I have some paperwork to do.'

They made arrangements around timings and what vehicle would be best to take, then Siggi emailed Iris with the details.

Half an hour before the time he had told her he would pick her up from her hotel, she arrived. She had a rucksack and a silver ruggedised case that presumably held her equipment.

‘I thought it'd be quicker if I came here,' she said, making no move to put anything down or take her coat off.

‘I am sorry, I need to wait for Jonas to arrive to take over the office,' Siggi said, suppressing a smile. Her assumption that she was their only concern this afternoon amused him.

‘Oh. Right.' She shrugged off her rucksack and took off her coat and hat.

‘While we wait for Jonas, shall we have a look at where you would like to go?'

Iris pulled out her laptop and showed him a detailed map of the area with an overlay of information that he didn't understand.

‘This is the road west out of Reykjavik, route 1,' Siggi pointed out.

‘Okay. Then I'd like to take this road south to Hraunvik.'

‘To the town?'

‘Yes.'

‘But the volcano is west of there. Or do you mean the Gunnuhver volcano on the tip of the peninsula?'

‘I need to go to the town. I could explain on the way, if that helps?'

It shouldn't have surprised Siggi that Iris might be single-minded about this and might not feel the need to justify where she wanted to go, but if a volcanologist wasn't that interested in seeing the volcano, he wondered what else could interest someone predicting eruptions.

‘Okay, that would be great,' he said, genuinely meaning it.

Iris smiled. ‘Thanks. I really appreciate you taking me today. It's important to get this set up before I meet the team over here.' She gestured to her silver case.

‘This is not something they would help you with?'

She shook her head. ‘It's an unorthodox theory, so I might be in the position of needing the data it's going to give me to prove my point.'

‘There is nothing I like more than being a rebel.'

Iris laughed. ‘I don't think anyone has thought I'm a rebel before, but it is something like that.'

Her entire face lit up when she laughed and Siggi beamed at her, intrigued by this clever woman who had just walked into his life yesterday.

Their heads were bent over the laptop again, assessing exactly where in Hraunvik Iris wanted to go, when Jonas came into the office.

‘Jonas, this is Iris Bellingham,' said Siggi, more formal than he would usually be. For some reason, Iris's trip made him feel like he needed to be more professional than normal. This was a serious business, far from the tours they usually did for visitors. He felt the gravity of the situation.

‘Pleased to meet you, Iris,' Jonas said warmly, shaking her hand.

‘Thank you for helping me. If I'm honest, I asked a few other companies as well, but as Siggi was so helpful to me yesterday, I feel in very capable hands with him and that's important.'

Jonas raised his eyebrows at Siggi, a hint of humour in his eyes. ‘I am happy that Siggi has been such a good representative of our company,' he said.

Iris seemed to miss the nuance in his tone, but Siggi felt himself blush. Jonas would definitely think Siggi was going above and beyond because he found Iris attractive. And while that was true to a point, there was much more to Iris than met the eye. And that was what intrigued Siggi far more than her blue eyes or the curls that kissed the edges of her face.

‘Siggi is our most experienced guide for that area of the country. He knows it very well.'

This time, Siggi shot Jonas a warning look. There was no need to explain to Iris what his credentials were for taking her to Hraunvik or why he knew it so well.

‘Okay, Jonas, so we will be off.'

‘Take care and make sure you take a satellite phone with you.'

‘It is already packed,' said Siggi, patting his own small rucksack.

‘It seems as if you are the perfect person for the job,' Iris said to him as they walked the short distance to where one of the company's jeeps was parked. She was smiling, but even that didn't make Siggi feel like elaborating. He would much rather get underway and grill her about what data she was after in Hraunvik than talk about himself.

‘It's a nice day for a drive,' said Iris, taking her coat off and settling herself into the front seat.

‘For now. It looks like we will see some rain or snow later this afternoon. It depends how long we are.' He didn't mind how long they were. He was looking forward to getting to know her better on the journey.

‘It might take an hour to set up the equipment once we find a good spot.'

‘We will not get trapped anywhere because of the snow at this time of year,' he said. ‘Although Jonas got caught out a few years ago and had to camp in a summer cottage with one of our clients. They're married now.'

‘Wow, that's an intense way to start a relationship. So you and Jonas are friends outside of work?'

‘Yes, we went to school together. A few of us work for him. He's a good guy. I like to travel and he lets me pick up where I left off when I am back here.'

‘Where have you been recently?'

‘I spent a couple of months in Thailand and then went to Hawaii on my way back.'

‘Hawaii? Really? I came straight here from Hawaii. I was working on The Big Island.'

Siggi's heart leapt inexplicably, as if the fact that they had been in the same place before somehow cosmically linked them. ‘I was on the Big Island until a couple of weeks ago.' He turned to smile at her and saw in her face that she was just as thrilled as him at having found this in common. ‘I enjoy surfing and although we have good waves here, it is too cold and dangerous to surf in the winter.'

‘My colleague, Dylan, learned to surf, so I used to go with him.'

‘You surfed too?' Siggi tried not to focus too hard on the image that flashed up in his head of Iris in a close-fitting wetsuit.

‘Oh, god no. I'd be hopeless,' she said, laughing. I mostly watched and occasionally swam if the waves weren't too wild.'

‘We might have been on the same beach.' This time when he glanced at her, she looked more thoughtfully at him.

‘We used to go to Kahaluu Beach. It's close to Mount Kilauea.'

‘I did surf at that beach! Small world.' It was crazy, but he started replaying those visits to the beach in his mind as if he might somehow see that Iris had been there.

‘It's mad to think we might have been there at the same time,' she said.

‘It is worrying me that if you were there, it is because you thought the volcano was going to erupt?'

She laughed. ‘Well, there had been some rumblings, but it came to nothing. You'd have been okay. It wouldn't have been a big one if it had happened.'

‘And how about this one?' Siggi looked across at her. ‘This could be big?'

He could almost see her switch into work-mode. ‘It's hard to say at this stage. But it's being closely monitored.'

They drove in silence for a few minutes, Siggi sensing the gravity of the situation, even though Iris hadn't said in so many words. They were getting closer now, having turned south on the road to Hraunvik, a small, traditional fishing village near the coast. Grey clouds had started to build. If he'd been with anyone else, Siggi would have suggested stopping off to look at some geysers and steaming hot springs, but Iris was all business. Keen to get her work underway.

‘How will you know where to put your equipment?' he asked her as they got closer to the village.

‘I have a detailed map of seismic data from the past week. I'll use GPS to pinpoint the places when we're there.'

They drove into the town, along the main road, which was familiar to Siggi. He pulled over on the side of the road while Iris fired up her laptop to check where she wanted to go.

‘Okay, can we go east of here?' She looked through the windscreen. ‘Maybe take that road.'

He did as she asked, pulling up outside a pair of houses when she asked him to stop.

‘Do you think you could come with me?' she asked. ‘I'd like to ask the people who live in that house there,' she said, pointing to the house on the right, ‘whether it would be okay to set some equipment up in their garden.'

‘Here? You want me to knock on the door and ask them?'

‘Yes, please.'

‘It has to be that house?'

‘I'd prefer that one. It's marginally closer to where I'm predicting a fissure might appear. I can do the knocking, if that helps?'

She was teasing him. But that was because she didn't know that it wasn't the knocking on the door that was the problem. It was who might answer it.

‘Everyone speaks English,' he said.

Iris looked at him, confused. ‘You think they'll understand if I start wittering on about lava tubes and mantle plumes?'

‘I am sure they will.'

‘I'm not. Come on, please Siggi. It's really important. This is the main reason I needed you to come with me. Don't you think I could have hired a car if I just needed to plonk some equipment down anywhere?'

He should have let Jonas come.

Almost every conceivable scenario was playing out in his head as he sat there, crippled with anxiety.

In some ways, it would get the moment he'd been dreading for years over with. He might be about to meet his teenage daughter for the first time. And Iris instigating it should take the pressure off him. There was no time to overthink or plan how he might introduce himself; often the stumbling block when he'd considered knocking on the door in the past. It could happen right now.

But what frightened him most, what had kept him away from her until now, was the thought of explaining to Arna why he'd taken that decision so long ago not to be part of her life. Why he'd decided he'd rather not have a daughter.

The shame and regret he'd carried with him since was like a stone in his heart. He couldn't imagine how he could explain to Arna that he'd thought she was a mistake. How could she see it as anything except her father abandoning her?

‘Siggi?'

He looked at Iris and wished that this moment hadn't come now. With her. It was one thing to meet his daughter at last, but quite another to have his two worlds collide at the same time. Just as he was getting to know Iris, to have to explain all of this, it was too much. But he couldn't see a way out of it.