Page 2 of The Start of the Story
I sighed. ‘One of them, certainly.’ I elbowed Chess in the leg. She was transfixed, staring at our visitor.
‘She doesn’t like people in here,’ she blurted, swivelling away from me. ‘Gets really cross at interruptions.’
‘And yet, here I am,’ the man said, still cheerful.
‘It’s not the being here that’s concerning me,’ I carried on, poking Chess quite vigorously now, out of sight of our visitor, ‘so much as thewhy.’
I wanted Chess to show him out. I rolled my eyes at her, then at the door and then nodded at our visitor, but she was blithely oblivious to subliminal messaging. ‘Do you want a coffee?’ she asked.
‘That…’ The man began removing his long black coat. Underneath, he wore a black sweater and black jeans – he looked as though he’d come dressed as a shadow. ‘…would be very nice, thank you.’
‘Chess,’I hissed, trying for reproach.
‘Oh, it’s okay, I was going to make you one too.’ Chess levered herself off the corner of my desk and, pausing only to trip over the rip in the carpet, exited. As she shut the door behind her, one of the screws holding my nameplate on pinged loose and I heard the thud as it slid sideways.
The man draped his coat over the back of the chair opposite my desk and sat down, uninvited. Then he put his elbows on the desk, rested his chin on his hands and eyeballed me.
‘You’re not what I expected.’
‘No. You thought I was a man, for a start. Now, can we go back to who you are and why you’re here, please? I’ve got work to do.’ I angled my head towards my laptop screen. It, sensing that something was up, had also gone black.
‘I’m Professor Connor O’Keefe,’ he said, as though that were all I ought to need.
‘How lovely for you.’ I was so waspish now that my voice almost knocked itself against the window. ‘Congratulations.’
I got another flash of the dark smile. ‘And I’m a historian.’
I felt my shoulders rise as the tension crept up my spine, stiffening my back and making my neck muscles rigid. Historians and folklorists. It was like Montagues and Capulets, Mordor and the Shire. We practically had scarves and team songs. We were, in short, natural enemies.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said, pretending a smile. ‘Still, we can’t all be on the right side, can we?’
The easy charm slipped a fraction and a flash of dejection crossed his face. ‘Ah, come on, now. We don’t have to turn this into a fight, do we?’
He had big brown eyes and the kind of cheekbones and stubble arrangement that would get him almost anywhere, especially in the world of history where they liked their professors to look as though they could be fronting a TV show about castles, complete with trying on armour and standing on battlements looking sexy. The charming smile and the Irish accent wouldn’t do any harm either. And what did I have? A too-short haircut, a complexion built from cheap food and an office behind a photocopier. And Chess.
Standing on battlements looking sexy wasnotin my repertoire. Sitting behind a desk being annoyed was, however, right up my alley. ‘As I still have to be told whatthisis, I’m afraid I can’t agree with you.’
Professor Connor O’Keefe leaned back on the chair and chewed at his lip. ‘And that’s awkward, now. I was hoping that you’d have been brought up to speed,’ he said. ‘I’m here working for the university. We’re surveying on a site up on the moors.’
I still failed to see what any of that was to do with me and said so. I kept my voice and eyes steady, he needn’t think a whimsical tone and puppy-dog eyes would cut any ice with me, and he was clearly beginning to see that this might be the case, because he’d folded his arms and gained a more combative expression.
‘I’m interested in this location.’ For a second he leaned behind him and pulled an old paper Ordnance Survey map from a pocket. It was so creased that it took both of us to spread it out on the desk. ‘There’s a marker – we think it might be Roman. Possibly even pre-Roman. So I’m here to have a bit of a poke around.’
I looked at the site he tapped. It took me a few seconds to work out where it was, upside down and with the major towns folded underneath, but once I got my eye in I felt my shoulders rise even higher. Any more tension and you could have played me like a harp.
‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘You can’t disturb that. That’s the Fairy Stane. And it’s not a marker, it’s a rock.’
And not just a rock, I thought, but wouldn’t add. I didn’t know this man and it was none of his business anyway. My emotional entanglement with a stone slab was almost inexplicable even to me and I certainly wasn’t going to go into detail with a cocky professor who dressed like a vampire and smiled like a film star.
Connor O’Keefe sighed. ‘Oh, I am so going to regret any of this,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Look. We think there might be some important lettering on the underneath. I’ve been doing some research and the thought is that there could be an undiscovered Roman town nearby, close by the Roman road that crosses the moor. That stone could give us an idea of location. Or it may even mark the site of an Iron Age boundary as it lines up with some other potential markers.’
Dark eyes swung up to meet mine. ‘So we’re thinking that we raise the stone and see what’s on it,’ he went on. ‘I proposed a short dig and someone at the university said that it might be an idea to run it all past you first. As you’re apparently interested in the site too,’ he added, but in a way that indicated that my work could, in no possible way, be as important, life-altering or destiny-fulfilling as his.
‘No,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘I said, no. No, you can’t lift that stone. As I said, that’s the Fairy Stane. I’ve been recording stories based in that part of the moors, and it’s vital tomywork that the stone remains in situ.’
