Rose nodded. ‘Yeah. I’m guessing we aren’t doing that now?’

Julian grinned. ‘Christ, no. That’s the sort of bottom-shelf schedule-filler I’d love us to leave behind. This’ — he gestured at the clearing around them — ‘is like finding the bloody Titanic.’

‘But we won’t have it to ourselves for long if she’s calling it in, Jules.’

‘I know. Grace is a good ol’ girl and wants to do the right thing. After all, in US terms, this is ancient history. To them it’ll be like finding Stonehenge.’

‘That’s my point, though. This site will be crawling with archaeology students and American history lecturers.’

Julian nodded. ‘But we found it, so surely we deserve the scoop, do we not?’

Rose nodded. ‘That would be nice.’

‘There’ll be a human-interest story here, Rose. A powerfully strong one. And if we can find out who they were and how they ended up here, and if they survived…?’ He looked around at the uneven floor of the clearing. ‘There’ll be all sorts of personal artefacts buried here to give us names. There’s bound to be family these people left behind, descendants today who’ll have a curious family story of their great-great-uncle Bill who travelled west to the promised land and was never heard from again.’ Julian turned to her. ‘I say we drop the stupid bloody project we were doing and instead let’s dig up what we can on this.’

‘Errrm.’ Rose tapped her chin with her finger. ‘Didn’t someone commission this stupid bloody project. You know… money? A paying customer?’

‘Stuff that. RealityUK are a truly shit reality channel paying us a piss-poor commission for this. Not to put too fine a point on it — screw them.’

Rose looked sceptical. ‘But it’s money.’

‘Look, I know money’s tight right now, but I’ll find some other small independents who’ll front some cash for us to work on this. Or better still, I’ll talk to my old contacts at the BBC. I’m still on chatting terms with Sean, and the guys on Panorama. Everyone’s going to want a piece of this.’