‘What?’

‘Just look! ’

Lol closed the gate behind him and stood and looked. He saw a gently sloping meadow full of Hereford cows, red-brown and cream, classic. You didn’t see enough Herefords in Herefordshire these days, but that clearly wasn’t what Jane had meant.

‘Oh,’ Lol said. ‘I see.’

Like the shadow of a tall pole, a path cut directly across the meadow. A visible path that could have been contructed or simply made by sheep crossing the field from gate to gate – dead straight from the gate they’d just come through to another one at a slight angle in the hedge at the bottom of the field. Both gates and the path were directly aligned with the smokey, sepia steeple of Ledwardine Church.

Lol walked towards the centre of the field, keeping to the path, and turned to see that the path was perfectly aligned, in the opposite direction, with the top of Cole Hill.

Some of Watkins’s lines demanded imagination, but this one spoke for itself.

Jane stood on the line, as if she was standing before an altar. Although the sun was high and warm, Lol saw her shiver. She wrapped her bare arms around herself.

‘Before you reach the village, there’s a mound just inside the orchard – behind Church Street? It’s not marked on the map, but it must be an ancient burial site, if only by its position in the landscape. Absolutely on the line. Like, it’s not very high now, but a lot of them aren’t any more; they’ve been ploughed in over the centuries. And then, on the other side of the mound, you’re dead on course, across the market place, for the church.’

‘You’ve convinced me,’ Lol said. ‘It’s a nice one.’

‘And… and, Lol, if you continue the line, through the church – I’ve only done this on the map, but it works, it totally works – within a mile, on the other side, you’ve got an ancient crossroads and a genuine prehistoric standing stone which is not very big but is actually marked on the map.’