Page 2 of Ignited in Iceland
‘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?’
