The day before, Sophie had marked out a practice trench a little way off from the main site and dug out the turf. She’d exposed roots and a patch of unusually sandy, dry soil and levelled the area with a mattock so the practice dig could begin. The topsoil had been dumped on the existing spoil heap. Everything was ready when Evelyn turned up at ten, just as she’d said she would, wearing corduroy trousers and a thick old sweater. She had the anxious, eager-to-please manner of a pupil sucking up to the teacher. Hattie talked her through the process.

‘Shall we make a start then?’ Hattie knew Evelyn was enthusiastic, but really the woman should be taking this more seriously, making notes for example. Hattie had gone through the methods of recording a site in some detail, but she wasn’t sure Evelyn had taken it all in. ‘Do you want to have a go with the trowel, Evelyn? We wouldn’t sieve everything in a site like this, though we might work it through the flotation tank, and every find would need to be set in context. You do understand how important that is?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘And we work from the known to the unknown so we always trowel backwards. We don’t want to tread on the things we’ve already uncovered.’

Evelyn looked up at her. ‘I might not be working for a PhD,’ she said, ‘but I’m not daft either. I have been listening.’ It was gently said but Hattie felt herself blushing. I’m no good with people, she thought. Only with objects and ideas. I understand how the past works but not how to live with people in the present.

The older woman squatted in the trench and began to scratch tentatively with the trowel, beginning in one corner, scraping away the upper layer of soil, reaching up to tip it into the bucket.

She frowned like a child concentrating on routine homework. Over the next half hour, whenever Hattie glanced across to her, there was the same expression on her face. Hattie was just about to check on Evelyn’s work when the older woman called over to her.

‘What’s this?’