‘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.
2
SIGGI ÓLAFSSON WAS lying in bed. He had to go to work, but he had no motivation to. Instead, he was swiping through the photos on his phone from the trip he’d taken to Thailand over Christmas. Now, in March, it seemed like a distant memory and he knew the only way to shake the despondency that had settled on him was to plan his next getaway. He’d been almost everywhere that he’d ever wanted to go. Places he’d heard of as a child and longed to visit, and places he’d discovered on the way. He was a nomad at heart and couldn’t settle back at home in Iceland for long. It was beyond him why Iceland was such a popular tourist destination. It was cold, dark and bleak for at least half of the year and that was when most of the tourists came. Why?
He sighed and threw off the covers. He’d be late if he wasn’t careful and although his boss, Jonas, was easygoing, he was a stickler for punctuality. Siggi liked and respected Jonas and was grateful that his friend was willing to let him work whenever he wanted to. It helped that Jonas didn’t mind too much when Siggi took off for his next adventure with next to no notice.
Yawning, he stepped into the shower and stood under the hot water, enjoying it sluicing over his body, then washed before he switched it to cold with barely a gasp since he was so used to it. Now he was awake. He dried off, grinning at himself in the bathroom mirror as he caught his reflection, before dressing in several layers of clothing. He ate a simple breakfast of overnightoats which he warmed through on the stove, because it was no good going out into the cold without something warm inside you, and drank a large mug of black coffee.
Sighing as he added yet more layers in the form of a fleece jacket, down-filled coat and hat and gloves, he laced his boots, locked the door to his flat and ran down the three flights of stairs to the ground floor. The building overlooked the main road that ran along the sea-front. It was the opposite end of the town to the harbour, where he would have enjoyed a much more interesting view. He was stuck with a grey sea that churned across the road from his third-floor flat, but he wasn’t living there enough to need anything more than a bolt-hole and a bolt-hole didn’t need a good view.
Siggi shoved his hands in his pockets and began walking briskly along the sea-front towards the middle of the old town where Iceland Adventures, Jonas’s company, had their office. Today, Siggi would man the office. He preferred being out on excursions but he’d not long been back from a trip himself and had yet to be allocated those jobs on the rota. In the meantime, answering calls and emails in the office saved Jonas or one of the others from having to fit the admin in as well as leading tours. Jonas’s wife, Rachel, sometimes helped in the office too. She ran excursions to artists and craftspeople who opened their studios for tourists, so she was happy to help but was glad to have Siggi back to give her a break.
He unlocked the office and turned the lights on as he went in. Before he did anything else, he turned the coffee machine on, popped a pod in and left it pouring while he took off his coat, fleece and hat. The phone had been diverted to the on-call mobile phone overnight, so Siggi cancelled the divert and fired up the computer. He sipped his coffee while he checked the emails for anything urgent that might relate to today’s excursions. It wasn’t uncommon for people to have missed aflight or something else that derailed their plans at the last minute. He sent a couple of texts to let his friend Olafur know he would be two people down on his glacier walking trip and another to Brun who was doing an airport collection later on in the morning because an additional four people had booked overnight.
‘Hey, Siggi,’ Jonas said with his usual grin as he came into the office, clapping his hands together to warm them before he took his coat off.
‘Jonas, I thought you were having the morning off.’
‘You know how it is,’ he said, shrugging.
Siggi knew. Jonas loved showing Iceland to anyone and everyone. He hardly ever had a day off, even in the quieter months. But his love for his country and his business shone through, making it one of the most popular tour companies in Iceland. It helped that most people who worked for him had been friends forever. It made the entire company feel like a family, and the people who went on tours with them ended up feeling they were part of it too. In fact, Jonas had met his wife when he’d collected her from the airport. And Brun had been the tour guide for his girlfriend, Fliss, when she’d visited Iceland for a book tour.
‘I’d have had a lie-in,’ Siggi said, with a rueful grin.
Jonas laughed. ‘You never change. You still live the life of a teenager.’
