‘I wish you every success with your dig, Mrs Hills, I really do, but I’m afraid our resources don’t stretch to protecting every last patch of earth in Gloucestershire. If you have any trouble – any threats, any actual evidence of theft by metal detectorists or anyone else – then do get in touch with us.’ And with that the line went dead.

Clare closed her eyes and turned her face towards the early summer sunshine. After her failure to get Gloucestershire’s finest to take the destruction of chunks of the site seriously, she’d decided to award herself an end-of-shift glass of Sancerre. To her surprise and relief she’d found that she was the only person taking advantage of the King’s Arms’ beer garden.

She rubbed at the back of her neck. The last few weeks had taken more out of her than she’d realised. She hadn’t appreciated how much of a strain the responsibility of being a site director would prove. It was one thing to stand in for a day or two when David wasn’t around, but having to sort out everything from hiring the JCB to making sure there was enough toilet roll in the Portaloo was quite another.

Still, on the plus side, she hadn’t had much time to think. And avoiding thinking was something she’d become particularly adept at since Stephen’s death. It had only been just over two years since his car crash. But her life today was unrecognisable now from the way things had been before his death. She sometimes wondered what he’d make of her if he met her now. Looking down at her mud-splattered moleskin trousers and scuffed steel toe capped boots, she suspected he wouldn’t have approved. She was about as far away from the image of the immaculately groomed wife of a successful solicitor as it was possible to imagine.

She ran her fingers through her hair and took a swig – Stephen would have thought rather too large a swig – of her wine. Well, he’d left her with no choice, hadn’t he? It was Stephen who’d managed to pour virtually every penny they’d possessed into what his friend and colleague James – his executor – had described as ‘ill-judged’ property deals without even bothering to mention it to her. The only visible means of support he’d left her with had been a tiny photographic gallery in Richmond.