An electronic ping she recognised sent a shiver through her. It came from her clothes piled up on the floor. Tom’s phone

Surtsey had been seeing Brendan for over a year, a fact that shocked her every time she remembered. He’d done his undergrad at Trinity College while still living at home with his parents, pitched up in Edinburgh for his PHD at the same time as she started hers, desperate to get some independence. It was odd that he was living away from home for the first time just as she returned home to take care of her mum.

They skirted around each other to begin with, just two faces in a group of friends, but gradually Surtsey began to notice his smile, the languorous way he walked, his easy grace.

They snogged while drunk, then just kept going, never giving it a name, not hiding it but not displaying it either, drifting casually into a relationship.

But Surtsey had never truly invested in it, that’s why she was shocked it had gone on so long.

She’d never met his parents or been back to Ireland with him, had barely met any of his friends, only knew the highlights reel of his childhood on the outskirts of Dublin with two older sisters.

Maybe they were the reason he was so respectful of Surtsey, so un-macho. He was easy to like, but she was never sure that he was easy to love.

“Go to sleep,” she said.

“Coming to bed?”

She scrambled over him, kissed him on the way, stroked his thigh then settled in behind to spoon him.

It only took a couple of minutes for his breathing to become heavy and nasal.

Pretentious

She uncurled herself and looked around the room as if she was a stranger, an interloper in her own life.

The rickety old pine bed she’d picked up on Freecycle, plain white sheets.

The dresser by the window, a clutter of make-up and toiletries, hand cream, anti-perspirant, overpriced Dior Poison Girl that smelt of bitter fruit.

She remembered the tagline for the advert: “I am not a girl, I am Poison.”

The usual pretentious nightclub scenes, a doe-eyed model breaking society’s rules. Such nonsense. And yet there was the bottle staring at her.

She went over and sat on the stool at the dresser. Lifted the glass stopper and dabbed at her neck.

She wondered what would happen if she drank the contents. She gazed at the walls. No posters of singers or movie stars, but a large map of the world with pins in it for each country she’d visited.

Fifteen so far, not bad but she hoped plenty would follow.

One pin stuck in Iceland, when Louise had taken her as a teenager on a field trip to Surtsey, somehow circumventing visiting restrictions.

She tried to remember the island but it merged in her memory with the Inch.

Elsewhere on her walls were posters of Surtsey and the Inch, and other new volcanic islands off the coasts of Indonesia and Japan.

Another large poster of Yosemite, just to show she wasn’t only obsessed with islands, and one of the Grand Canyon.

No pin in the map for either of them yet. So much left to do, so many places to see.

An electronic ping she recognised sent a shiver through her. It came from her clothes piled up on the floor. Tom’s phone.

She reached for her jeans and pulled it out, swiped the screen. Another message from an unknown number:

I’m sorry.

She stared at the phone shaking in her fist. Brendan rolled onto his back, chest rising and falling.

Apologising

She watched him as he rubbed at his nose then relaxed. Another ping in her hand:

I didn’t mean it.

She wanted to throw the phone at the wall, smash it into a million pieces.

Instead she just stared at the four words on the screen.

She imagined it was the island itself, apologising for taking her lover from her. As if. She typed in reply: Tell me who you are.

She pressed send and waited. Looked at the world map on the wall.

Seven billion people on the planet, only one of them on the other end of this phone.

Ping: Not yet.

She thought about that for a long time then replied:

Then when?

No answer. The phone screen eventually faded to black. Surtsey woke it up and typed:

If you’re really sorry, go to the police.

A reply came quickly this time.

I can’t. Goodbye.

“Wait,” she said. Brendan snuffled and scratched at his chest, murmured under his breath.

She pulled on joggers and a T-shirt, took the phone downstairs in the dark.

She went into the living room but Iona was asleep on the sofa, leather jacket wrapped around her shoulders.

She went into the kitchen then out the back door and stood in the garden on the small square of grass and tried to return call but no joy.

Eventually she typed:

You coward. Who are you?

The light from the screen illuminated her face in the gloom. Her feet were wet from the dewy grass.

She looked around as if she would find answers, saw the thin outlines of her neighbours’ houses, the back wall that led to the lane, the shed where her boat slept.

She went to the shed and opened it, checked on the boat. It was as she’d left it, motor pulled up, hull locked into the trailer.

She ran a hand along the side of the hull, rubber sticky against her fingers.

Her hand came away sandy and she stared at it then wiped it on her trousers.

She looked one last time at the phone screen but knew there would be nothing. She put it in her pocket and pulled herself up into the boat.

She landed inside and sat there, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for answers. Waiting for whatever was coming next.

Creaking

“Found her.”

Iona’s voice. Light lancing in through the shed door. Surtsey scrunched her eyes and sat up. Her back ached and her neck was stiff.

She raised her hands straight up like she was praying, then slid her palms along her shoulders, her body creaking as she stretched.

“And you think I’m the unstable one,” Iona said. “I don’t think that.”

Iona was silhouetted in the doorway like an avenging angel.

“Sure you do. But I’m not the one sleeping in the boatshed.”

More tomorrow.