‘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 toArna 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.
5
SIGGI WASN’T MOVING from the passenger seat. There was obviously some particular reason he was reluctant to help her out with the translating. She knew he was chatty and personable, so she was at a loss to understand why he suddenly looked like a rabbit in the headlights.
‘You don’t know the Icelandic words for the volcanology terms? Is that it? We could do google translate, if that helps?’
His face brightened. ‘Youcould use google translate.’
‘I could, but the point is that I would be a random English person knocking on their door. Whereas you, at least until a minute ago, are a friendly-faced native-speaker who they’re more likely to trust.’
He sighed. ‘I might know someone who lives in that house.’
‘Ah.’ Now it was starting to make sense. ‘Is it a woman? Someone like Embla?’
His head spun, a look of surprise on his face. ‘What did Embla say?’
