It’s a relief to go to work the next day. As I’m leaving to get the train, I’m aware that only a handful of crew members have turned up instead of the normal twenty-odd people who are usually there first thing. I skip my usual coffee in the marquee. I’m distraught that the film project seems to have derailed, along with my plans for the B&B. Then there’s the issues with Katie and Phillipa… But I’m not kidding anyone. The real reason I’m upset is that I haven’t seen or heard anything from Luke since I saw him go off with Michelle in her car two days ago. And while I’m absolutely convinced that that’s for the best, I feel like there’s a hole inside my chest where my heart has been ripped out.
Before leaving the house, I’d checked the water level in the cellar. The pump appeared to be doing the trick, confining the water to the hole underneath. I’d stood at the edge and looked down into the dark chasm that had been underneath my house all along, with no one knowing it was there. And I’d thought about what other secrets lie buried within the walls of this place I’d made my home. The events of the last few days have reinforced the fact that my life is just one more pageant unfolding within its walls. It was here long before I was. It will be here long after I’m gone.
Around midday, I get a call on my mobile. It’s from Connie, whom I’d left in charge of the drain men at the house. I’d also asked her to take the children swimming after school at the leisure centre, in order to avoid any more football or raised hopes about film parts. She’d given me one of her looks – a cross between sympathy and exasperation – and agreed. I had a strong urge to confide in her about what Phillipa said, but I couldn’t bring myself to repeat the things she’d implied about Luke.
I feel a stab of trepidation as I answer the phone. Has something else gone wrong?
‘Lizzie,’ Connie’s voice sounds distant, ‘you’ll never guess what’s happened.’
‘What? Is it the children? The film? Is someone injured?’
‘Well…’ she hesitates, ‘not exactly. In fact, someone’s dead.’
‘Dead?’ The word screams through my body.
‘Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have put it in those terms. They found a skeleton, down in the tunnel.’
‘The tunnel? What tunnel? What are you talking about, Connie?’ My hand starts to tremble as I switch off my computer and shove some papers in my bag. ‘I can be home in…’ I check my watch, ‘an hour and fifty minutes. If I leave now.’
‘Come home if you like, but there’s really no need. Nothing to be done for the poor chap. He’s been down there for about 200 years.’
*
I’m so shaken that I do leave, right then and there. I tell Diana’s PA that I’ve got to go home to deal with an emergency, and catch the next train. When I arrive home, there are two police cars double-parked next to the Portaloos. I break into a run.
The marquee is empty as I go past the entrance. I catch sight of John J and John C over near the dock, having what looks like a heated argument with one of the drain men. Luke is nowhere to be seen, nor Phillipa, nor any of the cast. I feel nauseous as I approach the giant hole in my back lawn, about halfway between the dock and the house. Connie and Simon are both there, standing behind a cordon of yellow tape. A tent has been erected over the opening. A ladder has been put down the hole, and two more drain men are sitting on the lawn under a tree eating their lunch.
‘What the hell is going on!’ I say, grabbing Connie’s arm. ‘You didn’t mention police.’
‘They aren’t police,’ she says calmly. ‘They’re forensic archaeologists. I told you, the skeleton’s been down there for a long time.’
‘But how did they find him?’
‘Your drain chaps. The well turned out to be a tunnel. It led to the shores of the lake. It had been sealed up for years with rubble, but when the set crew started digging down to make that dock, they broke through. That’s what caused the flood – the water rushing in and filling up the tunnel. The drain men went into the tunnel and found a skeleton. And a lot of other stuff too, apparently.’
‘What stuff?’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘It’s not clear yet. Some barrels I think.’
‘Smugglers,’ I say. ‘They really were here.’
‘So it would seem,’ Simon says. ‘This could be really something.’
I shake my head slowly back and forth. ‘I’m not sure I can handle any more surprises.’
Connie sniffs and takes out a small silver object from the back pocket of her jeans. ‘Here,’ she says, ‘I think you need this.’
I unscrew the lid of the flask and put it to my lips. Right now, I wouldn’t even dream of saying no.
*
Whatever the forensic archaeologists are doing down in the hole, they aren’t letting on. Thankfully, Connie had the foresight to ask Hannah to take the kids after school, so I don’t need to explain to them what’s going on. Not that I know myself. I hang about for half an hour pacing back and forth, having, admittedly, more than one nip from Connie’s flask. I’ve just handed it back to her for the third time when John C comes over to me.
‘We aren’t admitting liability, just so you know,’ he says.
‘Of course not.’ I roll my eyes. ‘As the police are involved now, I suppose they’ll say what’s what.’
‘They aren’t police,’ he replies. ‘They’re—’
‘Yes,’ I cut him off with a wave of my hand. ‘I know.’
Just then, a woman in a white plastic boiler suit pops her head out of the hole. ‘We’re bringing her up,’ she says to the man keeping guard at the top of the hole.
‘Her?’ I exchange a glance with Connie.
‘The skeleton is female,’ the woman confirms.
‘Female? 200 years old?’ I step forward, stretching the tape at the edge of the cordon.
‘Give or take,’ the woman says. ‘I’m afraid we’re unlikely to find out much more than that. Like who she was, or how she died. Or if the body was dumped there after death. There just won’t be that kind of evidence left.’ She disappears back down the hole.
‘I suppose that’s for the best,’ Simon says. He hasn’t spoken very much, but he’s now voiced what all of us are thinking.
‘I think I know who she is,’ I say. ‘Veronica Jones.’
‘Who?’ Simon says.
‘The woman who disappeared back in 1790. Her story is in the museum. Her husband was a smuggler. It was thought that he murdered her.’
‘Oh.’ He bows his head.
I stand there in silence, thinking about the poor woman, and what she must have gone through. We may never know the details of how she ended up where she did, but it must have been brutal and terrifying.
Half an hour later the forensic archaeologists hoist the skeleton up through the hole. They’ve encased the remains in a black vinyl bag. Tears well up in my eyes at the sight, but I wipe them away. Two men carry the remains out to their van. I follow slowly behind as far as the marquee. I go inside the open door and collapse on one of the chairs, my head in my hands.
A while later, I hear footsteps coming towards me. I look up and see Theo.
‘Hi,’ I say, feigning a smile.
‘Lizzie, are you OK?’ There’s concern in his voice. ‘I’m told this is all only temporary.’
‘Temporary?’ I repeat. ‘She’s been dead for hundreds of years. That seems pretty permanent to me.’
‘She?’ He looks puzzled. ‘Sorry, I meant the film location. You know they’ve found a place down the road, right? They’ll use it as Idyllwild Hall – at least until things get sorted here. The production company is all over Luke and Richard. They won’t tolerate any more delays.’
I stare at him dumbly. ‘They found a skeleton down a tunnel underneath my house,’ I say. ‘I don’t know about any other film location.’
‘A skeleton?’ His interest suddenly perks up. ‘Of a woman?’
‘Yes,’ I say, feeling a numbness spread through me.
‘It must be Veronica Jones,’ he says. ‘You know about her, right? I saw Phillipa’s research on her from the local museum.’ He launches into the story, seeming not to remember that we’ve discussed it before. ‘Back in the late eighteenth century, the house was owned by a nobleman called Zachary Jones,’ he says. ‘He lost his fortune in America, and made ends meet by doing a little smuggling on the side. His wife disappeared – some people said she ran off with another man, but others said he did her in. After seven years, he married another woman. A woman who had been a servant in his house. It was quite scandalous back in the day.’
‘It must have been,’ I say.
‘I guess he did her in after all.’ He makes it sound like this newly revealed slice of history is all part of a fiction novel – which, of course, it is. I wonder if he knows about the other ‘story’ that Phillipa claims is part of her novel. The story about Julie, and her, and Luke – all in the past, but the much more recent past. Somehow, I get the feeling that he doesn’t. It strikes me how all along Phillipa has been like a puppet master, pulling strings for her own purposes. Theo certainly seems more than willing to dance to her tune.
‘I guess he did,’ I say. ‘Not very romantic, if you ask me.’
Theo nods. ‘I agree. It’s a good thing Phillipa changed the ending to the story. If there’s one thing you can be sure about in a romance novel, it’s that there will always be a happy ending.’
‘I guess her audience isn’t looking for truth. Because there are no happy endings in real life, are there?’
Without letting him answer, I get up and walk off to the house.
*
I do the washing-up in the kitchen, and then sit down at the table with a cup of tea, staring at the cup, unable to drink. I’m grieving again, I realise. For the woman who died alone in a tunnel under my house. For the film project that brought me such a mixture of joy and despair, and will now, from the sound of it, be finished elsewhere. For the friend I thought I’d made in a charismatic yet unfathomable woman who wrote a bestselling novel. For the young girl who died in a tragic accident and never had the chance to grow up, live her own life, have her own successes and failures. For something I shared with a most unlikely man – a moment, sparkling with possibilities, that will never be realised.
I’m aware of people speaking outside the door – the drain men, now finished with their lunch. The people in the white suits have allowed them to go back down the hole and do whatever they need to do to seal up the tunnel and make sure it doesn’t flood again. All of it goes on around me, like I’m seeing and hearing it through water. I don’t know how long I sit there, as the tea stops steaming and then grows cold.
A hand shakes me on the shoulder. I look up, startled. It’s Simon, his presence unassuming and comforting. ‘They found some things down in the tunnel,’ he says. ‘If you’re up to it, you should come have a look.’
‘What?’ I say, through a tide of despair. ‘More bodies?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘When you’re ready, come see.’
Eventually I manage to rouse myself. I pour the cold tea down the sink. I try not to think or feel anything as I walk out the back door and go over to the hole in my lawn that’s still covered by the tent.
Simon is waiting for me. ‘It’s quite wet down there, but it’s safe to go down the ladder,’ he says. ‘Do you want me to go first?’
‘I’ll go.’ With a last breath of clean spring air, I climb down the ladder. It’s longer than I expected – at least fifteen feet down to the bottom. Some large portable lights have been set up, making it look almost like a subterranean film set. Even so, it takes a minute before my eyes adjust to the damp, cloying darkness.
One of the drain men is down at the far end of the tunnel, just beyond the light. His shadow flickers large on the algae-covered wall of the tunnel.
‘What am I looking for?’ I ask, as Simon comes down the ladder. The ceiling is low so we both have to stoop.
‘This way.’ He flicks on a torch and leads me away from the big lights, towards the house. The tunnel seems to be blocked up by stacks of debris and rubble. As Simon shines the torch, I begin to make out geometric shapes. Casks and barrels, and large wooden crates. Several of the boxes have been pried open.
‘What is this stuff?’
One of the forensic archaeologists working down at the other end of the hole comes to join us. ‘We aren’t completely sure yet, but it looks a little bit like buried treasure.’
I wait for the laugh – for any indication that he’s joking. When none comes, I frown at him. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Oh, I don’t mean coins and jewels or that sort of thing,’ he says. ‘But rather treasure of a historical nature.’
He goes over to one of the open boxes as Simon shines the torch in his direction. He takes out something soggy – a large piece of fabric. ‘Pure Chinese silk,’ he says. ‘Sadly, I don’t think the fabric is going to be salvageable, having been down here so long. But some of the rest might. Have a look in there.’ He gestures over at the other open crate. I go to it and take the lid off. Inside, it’s full of wet sawdust and cotton. But peeking out from the packing material is a large piece of ceramic. He comes over and stands beside me as I grab onto it and gingerly lift it out.
It’s an exquisitely painted blue and white vase.
‘I’m not an expert, but I’d say that’s a Qing dynasty vase from the late seventeenth century,’ he says. ‘Maybe even earlier.’
‘Oh!’ I set it back down in the packing material, afraid that I might break it.
‘There seems to be plenty more here, as you can see,’ the man says. ‘Of course, it may well not all be porcelain. There may be rum, or other spirits, plus the fabrics – whatever the smugglers could get their hands on.’
I feel like I’ve stepped into an episode of Time Team, and that this isn’t really happening here, to me. I stare at the sheer volume of crates, piled almost to the top of the tunnel.
‘What do I do now?’ I ask the man, praying that he’ll know the answer.
‘I can give you some names,’ he says. ‘There’s a professor at the University of Brighton that will be very interested in documenting this find. He can get a museum on board, or whatever you want to do.’
‘But… it isn’t mine. I mean surely someone must have a claim on it.’
‘After all these years that may be unlikely. And I’m afraid that since it’s been found on your land you’re going to have to take some responsibility for dealing with it. There are laws on the ownership of treasure once the find has been documented. But that aside, if I were you, I’d let in one or two of those reporters who are camped out at the gate.’ He looks at Simon, who nods. ‘Your mother-in-law told us that you were thinking of opening a B&B. Whether or not you get to keep the treasure, I’ll bet you get some great publicity from this.’
‘Yes,’ I say, barely able to register what he’s saying. The B&B, the film, publicity… real life. I’m still in shock, but I need to pull myself together. ‘But what about the skeleton?’ I say.
‘The chap from Brighton can look into that too. It’s a great find for local history.’
‘I understand.’ I feel the sudden urge to get out of there, back up into the light. I’ll call in the chap from Brighton and get him to take care of documenting the artefacts and donating them to a museum. As for the reporters – publicity is the last thing I want right now. The women’s remains should be treated with respect and dignity, not like a three-ring circus. I’ll try to make sure she gets a proper burial. And if, someday, her true story can be told, then so be it. That, however, I’ll leave to other people.
I walk back to the ladder, a little light-headed. I feel like I’ve dived down into deep water, and am struggling to swim up to the dazzling light at the surface. I feel Simon’s steadying hand on my back, as I grasp the sides of the ladder. I put one foot over the other, and slowly begin to climb up.