Chapter One

The landing cupboard is stacked high with what Glyn calls low-use material: conference papers and research papers including, he hopes, a paper that he needs right now for the article on which he is working. All of these go back to his postgraduate days, in no convenient sequential order but all jumbled up. A crisp column of Past and Present magazine is wedged against a heap of tattered files. Forgotten students drift to his feet as he rummages, and lie reproachful on the floor: ‘Susan Cochrane’s contributions to my seminar have been perfunctory’ … labelled boxes of aerial photographs showing archaeological sites are squeezed gainst a further row of files. To remove one will bring the lot crashing down, like an ill-judged move in that game involving a tower of balanced blocks. But he has glimpsed behind them a further cache which may well include what he is looking for.

On the shelf above he spots the gold-lettered spine of his own doctoral thesis, its green cloth blotched brown with age. On top of it sits a 1985 run of the Archaeological Journal. Come to think of it, the contents of the landing cupboard are a nice reflection of his profession – it is a landscape in which everything co-exists requiring expert deconstruction. But he does not dwell on that, intent instead on this increasingly irritating search.