‘Yes, I have – but I wanted to leave some for you to find as well.’ Some laughter at the joke, which was a relief. It was only the redhead’s second year in her academic role, and she still found balancing research and teaching hard. ‘I hope I’ll inspire you to make your own discoveries. But I also want you to learn from my mistakes.’

‘What mistakes?’ asked a man – a boy; God, they were all so young! – she was fairly sure was called Aiden.

‘I used to think it was my job, my duty, to bring lost wonders back to the world,’ Nina told him. ‘Which I did. Atlantis, the tomb of Hercules, El Dorado, Valhalla, the Ark of the Covenant . . . and more besides.’

‘It’s a very impressive list.’ She remembered this youth’s name: Hui Cheng, a student from China. Her concern that he had won admission to the university based solely on his wealthy parents’ bank balance had already been assuaged by his work, breadth of knowledge and drive.

‘Thank you. But it came at a price. It seems like every discovery I made had some madman, or occasionally madwoman, after it for nefarious ends. And I don’t just mean tomb raiding for money. I’ve faced people trying to start wars, take over countries, nuke cities . . .’

‘You didn’t talk about this in your books,’ said Aiden dubiously.

‘My books are about the actual archaeology. If you want explosions and gunfights and car chases, you can always watch the ridiculous movies based on them!’ More laughter. She let it subside, then continued, more sombrely: ‘But the antimatter explosion in the Persian Gulf three years ago? That was caused by something I found. When Big Ben in London collapsed? Again, caused by one of my discoveries. The religious cult gassed in the Caribbean, the skyscraper destroyed in Tokyo – all ultimately my responsibility.’

‘But you weren’t personally responsible,’ said Cheng. ‘The incident in Antigua, you’d been kidnapped! You didn’t have a choice.’

‘They wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been involved,’ Nina insisted. ‘My thought process at the time was: I can find these things, so I must find these things. I never considered whether I should find these things.’

‘So . . . you wish you hadn’t found them?’ Madison asked. ‘You think your whole career’s been a mistake?’