Shelagh lowered the beam.

“In front of the altar.”

“Altar?”

The strong white light cut through the inky blackness of the chamber like a searchlight. For a fraction of a second, the shadow of the altar was silhouetted on the rock wall behind, like the Greek letter pi superimposed on the carved labyrinth. Then Shelagh moved her hand, the image vanished and the torch found the grave. The pale bones leaped out at them from the dark.

Straight away, the atmosphere changed. Shelagh gave a sharp intake of breath. Like an automaton, she walked down one, then two, then three steps. She seemed to have forgotten Alice was there.

Stephen made a move to follow.

“No,” she snapped. “Stay there.”

“I was only-”

“In fact, go find Dr. Brayling. Tell him what we’ve found. Now,” she shouted, when he didn’t move. Stephen thrust his torch into Alice’s hand and disappeared into the tunnel without a word. She could hear the scrunch of his boots on the gravel, getting fainter and fainter until the sound was eaten up by the darkness.

“You didn’t have to shout at him,” Alice started to say. Shelagh cut across her.

“Did you touch anything?”

“Not exactly, though-”

“Though what?” Again, the same aggression.

“There were a few things in the grave,” Alice added. “I can show you.”

“No,” Shelagh shouted. “No,” a little calmer. “We don’t want people tramping around down there.”

Alice was about to point out it was too late for that, then stopped. She’d no desire to get close to the skeletons again. The blind sockets, the collapsed bones were imprinted too clearly on her mind.

Shelagh stood over the shallow grave. There was something challenging in the way she swept the beam of light over the bodies, up and down as if she was examining them. It was disrespectful almost. The light caught the dull blade of the knife as Shelagh squatted down beside the skeletons, her back to Alice.

“You say you touched nothing?” she said abruptly, turning to glare over her shoulder. “So how come your tweezers are here?”

Alice flushed. “You interrupted me before I’d had the chance to finish. What I was about to say was I picked up a ring-with the tweezers, before you ask-which I dropped when I heard you guys in the tunnel.”

“A ring?” Shelagh repeated.

“Maybe it’s rolled under something else?”

“Well, I can’t see it,” she said, suddenly standing up. She strode back to Alice. “Let’s get out of here. Your injuries need seeing to.”

Alice looked at her in astonishment. The face of a stranger, not a good friend, was looking back at her. Angry, hard, judgmental.

“But don’t you want-”

“Jesus, Alice,” she said, grabbing her arm. “Haven’t you done enough? We’ve got to go!”

It was very bright after the velvet dark of the cave as they emerged from the shadow of the rock. The sun seemed to explode in Alice’s face like a firework in a black November sky.

She shielded her eyes with her hands. She felt utterly disorientated, unable to fix herself in time or space. It was as if the world had stopped while she’d been in the chamber. It was the same familiar landscape, yet it had transformed into something different.

Or am I just seeing it through different eyes?

The shimmering peaks of the Pyrenees in the distance had lost their definition. The trees, the sky, even the mountain itself, were less substantial, less real. Alice felt that if she touched anything it would fall down, like scenery on a film set, revealing the true world concealed behind.

Shelagh said nothing. She was already striding down the mountain, mobile phone clamped to her ear, without bothering to check if Alice was managing all right. Alice hurried to catch her up.

“Shelagh, hang on a minute. Wait.” She touched Shelagh’s arm. “Look, I’m really sorry. I know I shouldn’t have gone in there on my own. I wasn’t thinking.”

Shelagh didn’t acknowledge she was speaking. She didn’t even look round, although she snapped her phone shut.

“Slow down. I can’t keep up.”

“Okay,” Shelagh said, spinning round to face her. “I’ve stopped.”

“What’s going on here?”

“You tell me. I mean, what precisely do you want me to say? That it’s okay? You want me to make you feel better that you fucked up?”

“No, I-”

“Because, you know what, actually it’s not okay. It was totally and unbelievably fucking stupid to go in there alone. You’ve contaminated the site and Jesus knows what else. What the fuck were you playing at?”

Alice held up her hands. “Okay, okay, I know. And I really am sorry,” she repeated, aware of how inadequate it sounded.

“Do you have any idea of the position you’ve put me in? I vouched for you. I persuaded Brayling to let you come. Thanks to you playing Indiana Jones, the police will probably suspend the entire excavation. Brayling will blame me. Everything I’ve done to get here, to get a place on this dig. The time I’ve spent…” Shelagh broke off and ran her fingers through her cropped, bleached hair.

This isn’t fair.

“Look, hang on a minute.” Even though she knew Shelagh was well within her rights to be angry, she was way over the top. “You’re being unfair. I accept it was stupid to go in-I didn’t think it through, and I admit that-but don’t you think you’re overreacting? Shit, I didn’t do it on purpose. Brayling’s hardly going to call the police. I didn’t really touch anything. No one’s hurt.”

Shelagh twisted her arm out of Alice’s grasp with such force she nearly lost her footing.

“Brayling will call the authorities,” Shelagh seethed, “because-as you would know if you bothered to listen to a fucking word I said-permission for the excavation was granted, against the advice of the police, on the understanding that any discovery of human remains would be immediately reported to the Police Judiciaire.”

Alice’s stomach hit the floor. “I thought it was just red tape. Nobody seemed to take it seriously. Everyone was always joking about it.”

“Clearly you didn’t take it seriously,” Shelagh shouted. “The rest of us did, being professionals and having some respect for what we do!”

This makes no sense.

“But why would the police be interested in an archeological dig?”

Shelagh blew up. “Jesus, Alice, you still don’t get it, do you? Even now. It doesn’t fucking matter why. It’s just how it is. It’s not up to you to decide which rules matter and which you’re going to ignore.”

“I never said-”

“Why do you always have to challenge everything? You always think you know better, always want to break the rules, be different.”

Alice was shouting now too. “That’s completely unfair. I’m not like that and you know it. I just didn’t think-”

“That’s the point. You never do think, except about yourself. And getting what you want.”

“This is crazy, Shelagh. Why would I deliberately try to make things hard for you? Just listen to yourself.” Alice took a deep breath, trying to get her temper under control. “Look, I’ll own up to Brayling it was my fault but, well it’s just that… you know I wouldn’t go charging in there, on my own, in normal circumstances, except…”

She paused again.

“Except what?”

“This is going to sound stupid, but it sort of drew me in. I knew the chamber was there. I can’t explain it, I just knew. A feeling. Deja vu. Like I’d been there before.”

“You think this makes it better?” Shelagh said sarcastically. “Jesus, give me a break. You had a feeling. That’s pathetic.”

Alice shook her head. “It was more than that-”

“In any case, what the hell were you doing digging up there in the first place? And on your own? That’s just it. Break the rules just for the hell of it.”

“No,” she said. “It wasn’t like that. My partner’s not here. I saw something underneath the boulder and, since it’s my last day, I just thought I’d do a little more.” Her voice tailed off. “I only wanted to find out if it was worth investigating,” she said, realizing her mistake too late. “I wasn’t intending-”