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from it sounded almost frightening, then she nodded slowly.
    Ali looked at her instructions and the map. ‘It’s this way,’ she declared and set off. They made a hundred yards before Lucy stopped them.
    ‘My straps are hurting.’
    ‘I’m not surprised they’re hurting. You can see through that cotton,’ Ali said. ‘Didn’t you bring an old sweater or something?’
    ‘I don’t own any
old
sweaters.’
    ‘Didn’t you bring anything serious?’
    A Land Rover was coming up behind them.
    ‘All my clothes are extremely serious. Those Bristol boys won’t know what’s hit them. Just make sure you’re on my tail. Where I lead, you follow.’
    The Land Rover pulled in ahead of them.
    ‘You said they’ll all have big white beards,’ Ali said. ‘They’re not even going to notice the fact that you’re hardly wearing anything at all.’
    The driver of the Land Rover opened his door as they reached it.
    ‘You look like the rest of my diggers,’ he said. ‘I’m Rupert. I’m running the dig. Would you like a lift?’
    ‘Where’s your big white beard?’ said Lucy.
    ‘You’ve got to be Christine Massey’s daughter,’ said the Land Rover driver, glancing at Ali as he let in the clutch. ‘You look just like her.’
    Ali sighed.

CHAPTER 4
    The last thing Ali wanted to hear on this first day of freedom was that she looked like her mother, so she was still frowning as she pulled the components of their tents out of
their bags. She was also cross with Lucy, who had sat in the front of the Land Rover deliberately swaying as it bounced through the potholes so that her shoulder collided with Rupert’s,
though he had seemed oblivious.
    ‘You’ll be pleased to hear the forecast is fine,’ he said. ‘I can promise lots of food and good company. As for the archaeology, I’ve made my offerings to the gods
of dirt and we will see what they provide.’
    He turned in through a field gate and nosed the Land Rover against the hedge on the end of a line of cars.
    ‘Grab your stuff. Pitch camp at the far end of the tents. Tea, cake and first get-together in about an hour.’
    He walked off towards a billowing pile of camouflaged green canvas where a group of young men were struggling with wooden poles.
    Lucy stared after him. ‘Six foot two, eyes of blue,’ she said. ‘Who said archaeology was boring?’ Then she saw him join the men at the marquee. ‘Those must be the
students,’ she said, ‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Well, seventy-five per cent of them are the right gender.’
    ‘Fifty-eight and a third,’ said Ali. ‘Seven-twelfths is fifty-eight and a third per cent. You divide a hundred by seven and—’
    ‘That’s what I have you for,’ said Lucy. ‘You do the dividing and Jo and I will go and do the multiplying.’
    Jo had been staring up at the steep wooded hill that rose two hundred yards away from their field. She smiled, glanced towards the marquee and began straightening out the tent and its tangled
nylon cords. Lucy walked off towards the marquee without a backward glance and Ali stared after her a little nervously. She had gone along with the bravado of the boy talk. She had lived through
varied fantasies of this adventure since the first moment her mother had suggested it. All of them had a boy in them somewhere – a boy who would fit Ali perfectly, a boy who would like doing
what she did, who would rather listen to the birds singing than something on earphones, who would have read Cormac McCarthy’s novels and Alice Oswald’s poetry – above all, a boy
who wouldn’t keep looking at Lucy or Jo when he should be looking at her. None of those fantasies had the flapping of canvas and the sound of strange male voices in them. The figures round
the marquee were frighteningly real and only a short walk away.
    Ali knew Lucy would be straight in there like a manseeking missile and she feared she would be left, awkward and unappealing. She finished fitting together one of