Autumn Leaves at Mill Grange by Jenny Kane (the little red hen ebook .txt) 📗

is difficult about access as it is. I don’t want to push my luck by turning up unannounced.’

Realising he’d hardly asked Tom about his private life, Sam turned a potato over with a long stick. ‘Then we shall do this again when he is here.’

Taken aback, Tom muttered his thanks before asking if he could help.

‘You most certainly can.’ A voice from the side of the house boomed across the garden. ‘You can fetch another three cans of beer and chuck some more potatoes on the fire.’

‘Shaun!’ Thea ran towards her boyfriend. ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’

‘Same place as these two.’ Shaun pointed to where the AA were rounding the corner of the house into the gardens.

Sam and Tina ran to where Thea was half hugging, and half telling off Shaun.

‘I’m sorry it’s so late.’

‘I don’t care what time it is, mate.’ Sam clapped Shaun on the back as he shook Ajay and Andy by the hand. ‘Just tell me, once and for all, are you guys going to be filming this place or not?’

Forty-Seven

October 2nd

Thea and Tina watched as Ajay walked at a painfully slow pace, up and down, holding the sophisticated machinery just above the ground. It was like witnessing an elaborate magic trick. As Andy downloaded the first set of readings from Ajay’s survey, they popped up onto the laptop screen before him in a haze of lines and smudges.

Determined to make the most of the one day of funding that Phil had said the geophysics team could have, they were concentrating on the area of the garden Thea and Helen believed to conceal a later extension to the fortlet’s structure.

Studying the growing number of results on the screen, Thea knew that if they were right, it would make the Upwich fortlet bigger than any previously found in the south-west. If they were wrong, although she’d be embarrassed, they would at least know the boundaries of the site, and would quite possibly come away with an underground plan of how the Victorians had terraced the garden.

‘What time are you expecting the cameras?’ Helen asked Thea, as Ajay turned direction with regimented precision, and started to walk again.

‘About ten apparently. Keen to be a star?’

‘Actually, I think it’s best I don’t appear. I’m not sure how my bosses will react to seeing me on screen when I’m supposed to be on holiday. They might think I’m moonlighting.’

‘But you’re on holiday. We aren’t paying you, although we ought to be, the amount of hard work you’ve put in here.’

‘I wasn’t touting for money, just playing cautious. I don’t think Tom is keen to appear on screen either.’

‘Really?’ Thea kept her eyes on the survey team. ‘I think Phil’s expecting Shaun to interview Tom about his work here.’

‘But he hasn’t started work here yet, not beyond preparing for the first guests on Monday and sorting the equipment lists. Anyway, there may not be any guests in the first group who want to train in archaeology.’

Thea smiled. ‘I know Tom has one guest for the first week, keen to stay on site the whole time.’

‘Really?’

‘Woody has booked in as a proper guest. The poor guy has the archaeology bug bad.’

Helen laughed. ‘That’s great. He’s lovely. Be nice for Tom to have a friendly face on Monday as well.’

‘He’s okay, isn’t he? Tom, I mean.’

‘A bit down about his son. Seems his ex doesn’t always play ball with access.’

Thea tilted her head on one side. ‘You like him, don’t you?’

Instantly bright red, Helen stared at her feet. ‘I just happen to have overheard a conversation Tom was having on the phone and when I asked if he was alright, he told me, that’s all.’

‘I didn’t ask you how you knew about his ex-wife. I asked if you fancied him.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous – what do I know about men with children? Or men without children for that matter?’

‘As little as the rest of us I imagine.’

‘The thing is, Thea…’ Helen tugged a spiral of hair, which leapt back into place as soon as she let it go ‘… I don’t know if I like him or not. And I can’t imagine he’d like me.’

‘Would you like him to?’

Helen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been on my own so long.’

‘But you’ve reached the point in your life when you’d like someone to come home to.’ Thea spoke gently, knowing this was a big deal for Helen. Always so together and independent, it must be disorientating to suddenly question whether she wanted to be single forever.

‘Maybe it’s something to do with being nearly forty. I’m probably having a midlife crisis.’

‘Or you could be human like the rest of us, and just need a cuddle sometimes.’

‘There’s that as well.’ Helen extracted some of the mud buried under her fingernails.

Resting on the ranging rod she’d been positioning to show the geophysics boys where she guessed the extended area of the fortlet might reach to, Thea said, ‘I know I’ve asked this before, but things are okay in Bath aren’t they?’

‘I’m drowning in work and—’ Helen waved an arm around her ‘—I miss this sort of work far more than I realised.’

‘I never dreamt they wouldn’t replace me. Why didn’t you tell me at the time?’

‘Because you’d have blamed yourself. Your coming here was the best move for you.’

Thea gave her friend a hug. ‘Do you think it could be the best move for you too?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Sam, Tina, Shaun and I had a chat after the bonfire last night. We wondered if you’d like to stay. We weren’t going to mention it until after the filming, but as the subject has come up, I thought I’d let you know what’s in the air. Give you time to think.’

‘Stay here?’ Helen gazed across the excavation and up at the house.

‘The wages wouldn’t be anything like as good, and the dig won’t last forever, but the writing of reports, articles and so on will. As will looking after the site in the future so