'Apparently so. He spoke to your mate Nelson. He says it's OK as long as they don't go into the henge circle. And, obviously, they've got to show the police anything they find.'
Erik has spoken to Nelson, whom apparently he dislikes and distrusts. Nelson has given permission for the dig.
Ruth's head swims in a miasma of contradictions, loyalties, memories.
'When did you see Erik?' she asks at last.
'Yesterday. We had lunch together.'
'Did you?' Ruth tries to imagine the scene. Erik always liked Peter, seemed to approve of him as a partner for Ruth, but she can't quite imagine them sitting down for a cosy pizza together.
'Where did you go?'
'Oh, some sushi place he knows.'
So, no pizza then. 'Did he say anything about Cathbad?
Michael Malone?'
'Only that the police had got the wrong man. He seemed quite heated about it. Kept going on about a police state, you know what an old hippie he is.'
Yet Erik was quite prepared to go to Nelson for permission to dig, thinks Ruth. Nothing, nothing, comes in the way of the archaeology.
'They're releasing Cathbad,' says Ruth. 'It'll probably be on the news today.' Well, Nelson didn't tell her to keep it a secret.
'Really?' says Peter with interest. 'Releasing him without charge?'
'There may be some charges, I don't know.'
'Come off it, Ruth, you seem to know everything.'
'I don't,' snaps Ruth, unreasonably irritated.
'Sorry.' Peter looks contrite. It doesn't suit him. 'So,' he asks brightly, 'how's Shona?'
'Fine. The same. Going on about how she's going to give up men and become a nun.'
'Who is it this time?'
'A lecturer. Married.'
'Is he promising to leave his wife?'
'Naturally.'
Peter sighs. 'Poor old Shona.' Perhaps he is thinking about his own marriage because he seems to slump in his chair, even his hair seems muted. 'I always thought she'd get married and have ten children. The old Catholic upbringing coming out.'
Ruth thinks of Shona's two abortions; the defiant declarations of independence before, the endless tears afterwards. 'No,' she says, 'no children.'
'Poor Shona,' says Peter again. He sinks even further into his chair. It's going to take a rocket to shift him.
'Peter,' says Ruth, lighting the touch paper, 'did you want something? I ought to be getting on.'
He looks hurt. 'Just to see how you were. I wondered if you'd like to go out for a drink tonight?'
Ruth thinks of going back to another girl's night in: Pinot Grigio, Liam, takeaway, mysterious text messages.
'Ok,' she says. 'That'd be nice.'
They go to a restaurant in King's Lynn, near the pub where Ruth had lunch with Nelson. This place, though, has pretensions: lower-case menu, blonde wood floors, square plates, banks of flickering candles. Chasing a lone scallop over acres of white china, Ruth says, 'Where did you find this place?' Then she adds hastily, 'It's great.'
'Phil recommended it.' That figured.
It's early and there are only two other couples dining, two thirtysomethings who are clearly counting the minutes until they can be in bed together and an elderly couple who do not exchange one word all evening.
'Blimey, why don't they get a room?' mutters Ruth as the thirtysomething woman starts licking wine off the man's fingers.
'Probably married to other people.'
'Why do you say that?'
'If they were married to each other, they wouldn't be talking, let alone be performing sex acts on each other's fingers,' says Peter in a low voice. 'Look at the old dears over there. Fifty years of wedded bliss and not a word to say to each other.'
Ruth wants to ask if this was what his marriage was like.
Say nothing, she tells herself, and he'll come out with it.
Peter was never very good at silences.
Sure enough, Peter sighs and takes a gulp of over-priced red wine. 'Like me and Victoria. We just… drifted apart.
I know it's a cliche but it's true. We just ran out of things to say to each other. Woke up one morning and discovered that, apart from Daniel, we had nothing in common. Oh we still like each other, it's all very friendly, but that something, that vital something, has gone.'
But that's what happened to us, Ruth wants to say. She remembers that feeling of looking at Peter – intelligent, kind, good-looking Peter – and thinking, 'Is this it?' Is this what I have to settle for, a nice man who, when he touches me, I sometimes don't even notice?
But Peter has his rose-tinted spectacles on again. 'With us, we had so much in common,' he says dreamily, 'archaeology, history, books. Victoria's no intellectual. Her only serious reading matter is Hello magazine.'
'That's very patronising,' says Ruth.
'Oh, don't get me wrong,' says Peter hastily, 'Victoria's a wonderful woman. Very warm and giving.' (She's put on weight, thinks Ruth). 'I'm very fond of her and we're both devoted to Daniel but it's not a marriage any more. We're more like flatmates, sharing childcare and housework, only talking about who's picking up Daniel the next day or when the Tesco delivery is coming.'
'Well, what did you expect to be talking about?
Renaissance architecture? The early poems of Robert Browning?'
Peter grins. 'Something like that. Well, we talked, didn't we? Do you remember the nights around the camp fire talking about whether Neolithic man was a hunter-gatherer or a farmer? You said that women would have done the hunting and you tried to creep up on that sheep to show how it could be done.'
'And fell flat on my face in sheep crap,' says Ruth drily.
She leans forward. It seems very important to make this clear to Peter. 'Look Peter, the henge dig was ten years ago.
That was then. This is now. We're different people. We had a relationship and that was great but it's in the past. You can't go back.'
'Can't you?' asks Peter, looking at her very intently. In the candlelight his eyes are very dark, almost black.
'No,' says Ruth gently.
Peter stares at her in silence for a minute or two, then he smiles. A different smile, sweeter and much sadder. 'Well, let's just get pissed then,' he says, leaning forward to fill up her glass.
She doesn't get pissed but she's probably slightly over the limit when she gets into her car.
'Drive carefully,' says Peter as he heads towards a new looking Alfa Romeo. Mid-life crisis?
'I will.' Ruth is glad that she doesn't have to negotiate the treacherous New Road with the darkness of the marsh all around. It's only a few minutes' drive to Shona's, she should be alright. She drives slowly, following other, more decisive, cars. On the radio, someone is talking about Gordon Brown. 'He wants to go back to the way things were.' Don't we all, thinks Ruth, taking a left turn into Shona's road.
Despite her tough words, she sympathises with Peter and his yearning for the past. There is something very tempting about the idea of going back to Peter, accepting that the mysterious perfect man is not going to turn up, that Peter is the best that she is going to get, probably a lot better than she deserves. What's stopping her? Is it the shadowy Victoria and Daniel? Is it Nelson? She knows that nothing will come of the night with Nelson – it is just that imagining herself in bed with Peter seems comforting and familiar; it does not, for one minute, seem exciting.
She finds a space by the Indian restaurant and starts to walk towards Shona's house. Out of reflex, she checks her text messages. Just one:
