I haven’t been writing as much as I would have hoped, but I have been writing, so…
currently writing: chapter two (of six)
current page: 114
this week’s wordcount: 729
current total: 30,756
Andy sits at the table at the font of the bar, looking out across the road at his tent pitched to the shore of Mývatn. He has a book on the table in front of him, but no mood to read it. His hands waver over the packet of tobacco and rizla papers – he knocks them away. He shakes his head at his own inability to roll himself a cigarette.
He looks down at his mobile phone, the screen battered and scratched. He lifts it up and thumbs into the address book, dialling through the alphabet:
Helen.
“I wonder.” He hits send, and the dialling tone cycles through the series of mechanical tones.
The answering service cuts in – the mail box is full. Andy frowns, and allows the phone to slide from his fingers and clunk onto the table. He frowns, and stares blankly out again to his end and over the blue-grey water punctuated by grassy islands.
The phone rings.
Andy turns his head and looks down at the mobile – quizzical.
“Hi Andy,” Hannah speaks into the mobile, “Thought you should know – Helen’s safe.”
She says the words with an unapologetic grin on her face. She’s standing in the living room of Hanna Katla’s family home with it’s simply white-washed walls and the assortment of rugs layered over tiles and overlapping with each other.
Guðni Ármannson lingers in the background, and Alice hovers from foot to foot alongside Hannah.
Ben stoops to pick up another piece of rock, studying it, and comparing it with others that he has gathered. He dismisses its worth and discards it with a flick of the wrist that sends it clattering across the lava field.
Hanna pulls into step with Helen, broaching conversation. Tentative at first, her question is leading and desiring of gossip. She follows up conversations of month’s previously, asking how the holiday went with Andy. Helen shrugs.
“He’s cool,” and Helen feels the weight of Hanna’s questioning gaze and finds herself forced by her own volition to say more.
“He’s a good mate,” she switches views between Hanna and her brother, “I’m glad I’ve got him.”
Hanna grins suspiciously, “You sure he’s nothing more?”
Helen swings her head round fixing her cousin with a piercing stare, holding her for a moment with her eyes before—
Helen laughs.
Andy laughs. Around the stainless steel and Formica surfaces of the diner with its canteen tables and chairs, his new friends share jokes and partake in an extended conversation. They are wrapped in their fleeces and cup their mugs of hot chocolate in their hands, breathing in the sweet vapours.
Helen is caught in conversation with Hannah, discussing the novel that she is working on, but she cannot help but glance down the table at Andy, darkly attractive and enjoying a social heaven with his new friends.
Opposite, Alice becomes aware of Helen’s sideways glances down towards Andy and finds amusement in the actions, questioning her friend about it, toying with her quarry, and enticing an answer out of her friend.
…a perfect example of the fast cutting in between scenes, location, time, and place!
