Neil ran his hand over the opaque surface of the drafting film, which she could see now was the main plan of the site. ‘These are the evaluation trenches. Beth was convinced she’d picked something up on the geophysical survey that looked like an enclosure ditch, but to be honest I could never see it.’ He pointed to two trenches towards the top of the plan. ‘That’s why they were positioned here.’

‘To see if you could locate the ditch.’

He nodded. ‘That’s right. But we drew a complete blank in this first one. Not a feature in sight. And certainly no sign of a ditch. And we’d only just opened up the second when … well, you know.’

Clare could see that despite what he’d said earlier this still wasn’t easy for him. ‘From what I can see it looks like you had plenty of finds, though.’

‘True enough. We had the usual handful of medieval pot and the odd flint flake or two. But it’s all pretty run-of-the-mill stuff for round here.’

‘I noticed there’s quite a lot of animal bone, though. And I’m not a ceramics specialist, but it looked to me as if there was a fair bit of Iron Age pot in there too.’

‘Maybe so, but not as much as Beth would have liked.’

‘Oh?’ Clare looked at him.

‘Forget it. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘Please, Neil. I’m going to have to take this site on now and given everything that’s happened I need to learn everything I can about what happened before I arrived.’

He gazed out of the window towards the copse on the hill high above them. What was he thinking? It was difficult to tell.

Eventually he turned towards her. ‘OK.’

She pulled out the two tattered chairs from beneath the desk and gestured for them both to sit down. It seemed odd somehow, inviting him to sit down as a guest in an office he was more familiar with than she was.

Neil plonked himself down with a sigh and sat for several long minutes, staring down at his hands which were clasped firmly together in his lap. ‘I suppose you’ve got a right to know, but it feels like I’m being disloyal.’

‘To Beth.’

He looked up and nodded. ‘Beth and me, we went way back. She was my tutor at Sheffield. She was brilliant. I don’t just mean great to know sort of brilliant; I mean she was genuinely intellectually brilliant. She spoke so fast in lectures sometimes you could barely understand what she was saying, but you could feel the energy flying around the room. She was so alive.’ He stopped short as if suddenly aware of what he’d just said.