Digging Deeper (2 page)

After the details of the two first-year field trips had been posted on the department notice board, it seemed unlikely many would select Ilkley over Italy. Beck had watched Rich’s list for the dig near Pisa grow longer and longer. Dina wrote and crossed her name out six times on each list. He reckoned if the sheets had stayed up one more day she’d be on her way to Italy. Just his luck.

Twenty students and two post-grads were taking the easy route to Pisa by air while Rich drove the equipment and the five handpicked female undergrads toward a month of copious sun, alcohol and sex. Oh, and the vague possibility of unearthing a worthwhile artifact between the sunbathing, boozing and bonking. Before he’d seen the redhead, all Beck had to look forward to was a month of decent Yorkshire beer. Now things looked a whole lot brighter, though the drive from York to Ilkley had gone a long way to cheering him up.

In this part of Yorkshire the landscape rivaled the best Italy could offer—miles of pale limestone walls running in crazy patterns over the land, climbing the sides of hills, following valleys, all linking together to create a mesmerizing patchwork quilt. Contrary to his expectations and the local weather forecast, it wasn’t raining. In fact, no clouds marred the sky, and instead of a tedious three-day journey through France and Italy, Beck’s involved less than an hour of easy driving.

The train pulled into the station and Beck spotted his lot at once. Four of them had rucksacks on their backs and the fifth dragged two huge, wheeled cases. That would be Dina. He rubbed his forehead in anticipation of the headache she’d cause. Only one female in the rucksack brigade, Jane, who was almost the exact opposite of Dina. Rounded where Dina was thin, pale where Dina was tanned, and bright where Dina was not. Matt, Ross and Pravit were typical male students; laid-back, scruffy and by the look of it, already drunk. He gave a heavy sigh. Beck’s post-grad assistant, Isobel, would be joining them in a few days. He prayed he could survive this lot until she arrived to whip them into shape.

All the students were smiling. Beck hoped they were sharing a private joke and not brimming with excitement at the prospect of this dig yielding something to make the TV news. Though Beck had assured Stanley Hunter, the head of the archaeology department, that finds at Ilkley could turn out to be as important as at Castleford. Stanley’s face had lit up like a firework. Beck had told his students the UK dig offered a unique opportunity for them to contribute to the understanding of Ilkley’s Roman heritage. In fact, Beck thought Hartington land would reveal nothing more enticing than a few modern potshards, courtesy of Ikea.

Beck was skeptical about the discovery of the piece of Samian ware in one of the Hartington fields and suspected Giles had purchased the fragment of rich, red-brown pottery on eBay. Giles, son and heir of Celia and Henry, and Beck’s best friend from university, had sent him the large fragment in a padded envelope. Beck had been unable to believe what he’d opened, nor Giles’ stupidity in entrusting an eighteen hundred-year old treasure to a layer of bubble wrap and the vagaries of the Royal Mail. It had occurred to Beck that Giles, who’d requested Beck’s attendance at his wedding that summer as best man, might have planted the piece to make sure Beck didn’t swan off to dig in Europe. Still, it had worked.

A slip of paper enclosed with the pottery had said—“F-for-Felicity found this. She says it’s Samian. So you can dig and be my best man.”

F-for-Felicity was right. It was Samian. Now Beck had seen this Felicity, he worried Giles was up to his old tricks.

Beck got out of the van as the five students approached. Dina beamed more broadly when she saw him, and he tried to keep his face neutral and his eyes off her chest. She was about to spill out of her blue top. Designer sunglasses wobbled on her head and bright purple nail polish covered her toes and fingers. Matt and Ross, in addition to their rucksacks, were also carrying bags of the same design as Dina’s cases. The queen had already chosen her servants.

Beck drove them to the supermarket before heading to the house. As he wandered up and down the aisles, he spotted a familiar pink-skirted figure in the frozen food section. She was twisting around, picking things up and putting them down. Her top was decorated in half-naked men and so tight that as she moved, it appeared as though they writhed all over her chest. Her red-streaked hair looked as wild as if she’d been electrocuted. She had danger written all over her and the sweetest heart-shaped face Beck had ever seen. He moved up behind her.

“Why don’t you buy lamb chops and get your own back,” he whispered, then smothered a smile as she barely rescued herself from a freefall into the frozen fish.

“We weren’t introduced earlier. I’m Alexander Beckett. Everyone calls me Beck. I’m leading the dig at Hartington Hall.”

Beck watched his hand hovering as his frantic brain tried to warn him of an impending electric shock. He found himself holding a bag of sprouts he hadn’t meant to pick up.

“I’m Flick.”

When he smiled back at her, Flick felt her grin widen. Then his gaze slid in the direction of her basket, and her stomach tied itself into an untidy pretzel. Almost everything in there was reduced. He’d think she was cheap. She was cheap.

“How do you eat your Jelly Babies?” Beck asked.

Flick followed his eyes to the only item in her basket without a reduced price sticker. “I like to suck them to pieces.” The moment the words came out, she wanted them back.

He laughed and this time when he looked at her, Flick caught fire even though she stood shivering in the freezer section. Flames erupted from her ears. She was about to disappear in Ilkley’s first case of spontaneous combustion. A puddle of water to a puff of smoke in seconds. She’d make the front page of the
Yorkshire Post
newspaper.

She hadn’t been flirting about the Jelly Babies. It was the truth, but it sounded so suggestive, Flick wanted a huge hole to open up in the supermarket floor right where she stood. A sizzling thunderbolt would do, or a sudden rise in sea level. Where was global warming when you needed it?

“I like to lick them clean, then bite their heads off.” Beck winked at her.

Flick gulped, then yelped when a shopping cart rammed her heels.

“Sorry,” said a blonde in dark sunglasses.

Flick ducked the flamboyant hand wave thrown at her.

“Beck, I need your advice about what wine to buy,” said the blonde.

Whiny voice too, Flick noted.

“I’m busy, Dina.”

Flick wanted to laugh. As if that would put off a fuck-me girl in action. Dina stretched between Flick and Beck to reach something from the highest cabinet, her breasts angled in Beck’s direction. The effect was somewhat spoiled when her hand came down holding a packet of Mr. Brain’s frozen faggots.

“I’ll see you at dinner tonight,” Flick said to Beck.

She walked away with a smile on her face but when two guys passed and made loud baaing noises, her smile disappeared. She glanced back, saw them laughing with Beck and cringed with embarrassment. Flick guessed he’d told them all about her encounter with the sheep. He wasn’t as nice as he looked.

By the time she got home to Timble, Flick was fuming. Beck and his students might find her escapade with the sheep entertaining, but she could still feel the hoof prints. Since she’d be serving the hunk his evening meal in a few hours time, Flick would have ample opportunity to get her revenge.

“Flick, is that you?” Kirsten shouted down the stairs.

“No, it’s Brad Pitt,” Flick yelled back. “Is that a beautiful woman up there?”

“Absolutely. Hey, Brad! Take your clothes off and get your lovely bum up here. It’s your lucky day.”

Flick smiled and went down the hall into the kitchen. She swallowed the lump in her throat and imagined for a moment she’d come home to find her mum in there cooking. Her dad had only just fitted the new kitchen when he and her mum had been killed. Two years ago, while Flick’s sister Stef was in the middle of her exams, some idiot had overtaken a lorry on the A59, the Harrogate to Skipton road, and plowed straight into their parents’ car. They died at the scene.

Michael Knyfe had been a self-employed plasterer who’d taken great pride in the thousands of walls and ceilings he left smooth and polished, yet died leaving his affairs in an unimaginable mess. Flick was sure her mother had no idea how bad things were because her father always managed to cover the cracks so perfectly.

There turned out to be no pension, no life insurance, no any-sort-of-insurance. Tax returns were only half-complete. The filing system confounded Flick until she realized there was no system. In the end, after a lot of hard work, all she and Stef inherited were debts. The government wanted money and so did the bank and several suppliers. The Knyfe sisters hung on to the house in Timble by the slenderest of threads. The mortgage continued in Flick’s name because she was the one with a job.

If Flick had been able to continue the career she had at the time of the accident, she’d have stayed solvent. Unfortunately, that hadn’t been the case. Stef had added to her money problems by making it very clear she didn’t see why she should leave university with a millstone of debt around her neck when her sister hadn’t. So in order to maintain the house, pay the mortgage and support Stef, Flick not only had to work herself into a premature grave, she’d been forced to take in lodgers.

Kirsten was the first to apply for a room in the house. She had a job in Leeds with a big law firm and was now part way through her training contract. The two of them had hit it off at once. Flick’s other housemate was Josh. Having Josh there was like having your mother, father and older brother living with you but rolled into one person. Josh worked at the headquarters of a grocery chain doing a job that remained a mystery despite his attempts to explain it. Every time they’d asked and he’d begun to describe the intricacies of investigating interlinked variables in the operation of post-processual consumer decision-making, their eyes would glaze over and he’d give up. All Flick understood was he did something with computers and enjoyed it.

She had no idea why he didn’t buy a place of his own, not that she wanted to get rid of him. He was organized, practical and sensible, and had saved her and Kirsten from more disasters and flesh-eating spiders than Flick cared to remember. It was Josh who discovered why the washing machine ate the wires out of their bras, Josh who could drill holes in walls without hitting water, Josh who always managed to get broken corks out of wine bottles and Josh who gave Kirsten a lift to work and back every day. Most important of all was that he obsessed more about the bathroom being clean than they did, so it was the one room in the house that always gleamed. As men go, he was almost indispensable.

“You lied. You said you were Brad Pitt.” Kirsten waddled into the kitchen walking on her heels with her toes in the air.

“You led me to believe you were a beautiful woman and you’re a monster penguin.” Flick looked at Kirsten’s feet. “A penguin with no taste. Silver nail polish?”

The monster penguin went on the attack. “Oh my goodness, what did you do to your hair?” Kirsten frowned. “Did you cut it yourself again?”

“No.”

“Flick!”

“I might have hacked at a few bits. Does it look okay?”

“Only if you were going for the I’ve-just-been-ravished look.”

“The most popular style of the year.” Flick smiled. “The illusion is complete.”

First thing that morning while Kirsten had still been in bed with boyfriend Pierce, Flick had crawled into her room and borrowed her hair straighteners. When she hadn’t been able to get them to flatten a wayward lock, she’d grabbed the nail scissors and got carried away. She really needed to go to the hairdresser’s but she couldn’t afford it.

“Will you sort it out for me before we go?” Flick dragged her fingers through the tangled mess. “I want to look nice.”

“Who for? Henry Hartington?”

“Possibly.”

“Ah, not Henry. Who?”

“Lady C.”

“Like I believe that.” Kirsten clicked Flick’s head with her finger and thumb.

“Ouch, all right, I give in. I met the best man this afternoon.”

“The archaeology professor? What’s he like? Beard, beer-belly and bad breath? Knobbly knees? Sandals?”

“Nope, you lucky, lucky bridesmaid. He has the face and body of a god. Gorgeous backside. Eyelashes I would kill for. Eyes I could swim in. Taller than me.”

“And?”

“Mind of a man.” Flick gave a dramatic sigh.

“There’s always something lets them down. What did he do?”

Flick told her and was disappointed when Kirsten laughed.

“He didn’t need to tell his bloody students.” Flick groaned, remembering his amused grin. “I thought he was nice.”

“Well, he saved you from the sheep and it is a funny story.”

“Only because the sheep didn’t stick its nose up your bum.”

“So make up your mind, you wavering magnet. Do you want to attract him or repel him?”

“Yes,” said Flick.

As she reclined in the bath, popping bubbles in the foam with the beak of her broken wind-up penguin, Flick wished she could wash away her problems and emerge as a new person. If only she could surge from the suds with a respectable job, a faithful boyfriend, no debts and food in the fridge—well, food in the fridge that was hers. Unbitten nails should be on the list, and because she wanted to be kind to animals, even though they were never kind to her, she’d also like her penguin to be able to swim again. She let it go and it sank to the bottom of the tub. All wishful thinking.

The respectable job had been hers, until she’d lost it. After three years studying hard for a history degree in Birmingham, she’d been selected from a starting field of two hundred as assistant to the marketing director of Grinstead’s, a medical equipment manufacturer based in Leeds. She’d loved it. It was there she’d met Marcus who worked for Yorkshire Television. He’d approached Gordon Lowe, her boss, about making a documentary on Grinstead’s, something to do with the survival of family firms into the twenty-first century. The program had never aired but Flick had found herself a boyfriend.