He paused for a moment as if to consider something, and then shook his head. ‘No, not entirely. She lived in her own little bubble. It was difficult for anyone to predict what she would do – least of all me. Even when we were living together her actions weren’t always entirely rational.’ He sighed. ‘So as much as I’d like to be able to tell you that you can rely on Beth’s work, Clare, I really don’t think I can.’

Clare stood up from where she’d been trowelling and stretched her back. Removing her sun hat, she ran her fingers through her hair. She felt exhausted. She’d tried to throw herself into her work on-site since her trip to Bristol. But despite her best efforts, it hadn’t worked. Her visit to see Stuart Craig had left her feeling unaccountably despondent.

From what Craig had said it sounded as if Beth had been an obsessive and more than capable of weaving her own fantasies about the site. The single-mindedness certainly chimed with what Margaret had said about her. And much though Clare would have liked to believe what Neil had told her, she was beginning to wonder if his version of Beth had been coloured by his feelings towards her. Even if what Craig had said about Beth and Neil had been born out of jealousy, there must have been something there to have sparked it in the first place.

She knew that she should feel relieved. If they were going to keep the Hart Unit afloat they needed to get in, dig the site and get out as quickly as possible. And now that it seemed there was every likelihood that there was nothing of any real significance to find at Bailsgrove, that had just become a whole lot easier. Paul Marshall would be happy, the unit would live to dig another day and she would get to keep the job she loved. Perfect.

Yet she couldn’t help feeling desperately disappointed. When she’d found that reference in Beth’s journal to the inscription, she’d begun to hope that maybe, just maybe, she had an Iron Age shrine on her hands. Realistically it would have been a huge challenge to dig. She would have had to put a massive amount of work in to do the site justice. And her dealings with Paul Marshall thus far had left her in no doubt that digging the thing with him breathing down their necks would have been an absolute nightmare.