Owen

I COLLECT MY TOBACCO STASH from the wall. Scratch a match along the strip on the box. Enjoy the feel of it the same way I did as a boy all those years ago. The sense of control, conjuring flame out of the air. The same way I did just before my dad and I left Tome for good, when I lit that match and threw it into a pool of petrol siphoned from the outboard engine of the fishing boat. Watched the flames climb quickly up the ancient timbers and then onto the old thatched roof of The Crow's Nest, which went up in one huge burst of flame, showering sparks. The pub was the heart of everything. The place they all gathered. The people who had bullied and judged and then pitied my family. They could go burn.

As I watched I experienced something new. I felt powerful for the first time in my life.

Now, dragging on my rollie, I take the path that leads into the woods. There seem to be birds everywhere, all of a sudden. I see them lifting out of the topmost branches of the trees, joining the others already filling the sky. It's as though there's something malign at work here. I catch myself. For Christ's sake. I'm not a superstitious man. My dad was, which is the precise reason I am not. My dad, rest his troubled soul, wouldn't have liked this at all. He would have called it an evil omen.

I become aware of another sound, beneath the chattering of the birds. I stop short on the path and stand still, listening. I could swear that I can hear the sound of heavy machinery coming from deep in the woods: the grinding, tearing noises of what sounds unmistakably like excavation work. But that's impossible. They're not meant to start until the evening. They don't even know where they're meant to be digging.

And yet what I'm hearing would very much suggest otherwise. I'm jogging now. Along the winding path that zigzags between the Woodland Hutches, feeling an urgent need to know what's going on.

Sure enough, when I burst into the clearing, I see the JCB's articulated arm rising upwards, carrying a full burden of earth.

What the fuck?

They have started. And not only have they done so without my permission, they've also begun digging in the wrong place, thirty yards away from where they should be. I start running again, waving my arms above my head, yelling to try and catch their attention, but I can see that both the guy on the ground and the one in the cab have their backs to me, intent on their work. As I get closer still, I can see that there is already a sizeable cavity in the ground. The metal jaws rise from the pit, spilling a huge mouthful of soil and grass.

Gesticulating like crazy, I try and alert the guy up in the driver's seat but he still hasn't seen me. He dumps the load on the growing pile beside him, then works the controls to plunge the shovel back into the earth.

Finally the guy on the ground must hear my shouts because he turns and looks as I stride toward them. He signals the guy in the cab. Finally, the excavator stops moving.

"What the hell are you doing?" I yell. "You're not meant to have started! And Jesus Christ, you're not even doing it in the right place! What the fuck is going on here?"

"The boss came and met us," the guy says, a little defensively.

"I'm the boss!" I shout.

"She said she was the owner."

"Francesca told you to start?"

"Yeah!" He seizes on this. "Francesca Meadows. That's what she said. The boss lady."

I feel dazed. Francesca's still in bed. At least, I'm pretty sure she is... but it wouldn't be the first time she's gone sneaking around without explanation recently.

"She asked us to start digging here. Didn't she?" he calls up to the guy in the cab who leans out and nods.

"Yeah. She said to get going. Pointed it all out to us."

I stare at the hole in the ground. "But this isn't the right place at all. It should be over there—where those trees have been felled. Are you sure that's what she told you?"

"Sure as eggs is eggs." The guy on the ground folds his arms. "Seemed very certain of what she wanted. Had some kind of map."

This is all really fucking weird. I have no idea what's going on, but I don't like it. "Look," I say. "I have to call Francesca." I gesture to the JCB. "Just turn that bloody thing off. All work stops until I say so, OK?"

They look at each other, shrugging, nodding. "Whatever you say, boss," says the guy on the ground.

Maybe it's not the end of the world. They've made a bit of a mess, that's all. Nothing that can't be filled in. It's just a bloody stupid waste of time. But that's not what's eating away at me. It's the strangeness of it all.

I try and call Francesca but the signal's particularly patchy here. I walk a little way back toward the main house, until a couple of bars flicker into life, but her phone rings out. I bring up my tracking app, wait for the little flashing dot to load. There she is: out on the lawns in front of The Manor.

I jog back to the guys.

"What did she look like?" I ask. "The woman who spoke to you?"

"Er..." They look at each other; a smirk passes between them. They found her attractive. The first one coughs. "Blonde, thirty-something."

I walk back toward the house and try her again. No answer. I hang up. I'll just have to go and talk to her. But one of the guys is striding toward me now. "Guv," he says, almost apologetically. "There's something there. Where we've been digging. You might want to come and have a look."

Christ, I think. What now?

I walk back with him toward the trees. Peer into the hole. I can't see anything at first, just debris and broken roots and stones and earth. Then a color that doesn't make any sense: a long slash of vivid blue. I hunker down to get a better view. It looks like tarpaulin sheeting, I think, just showing through the earth. It looks as though it might have been used to wrap something—a large object, still concealed just beneath the soil.

I stand back up, trying to rationalize my sudden sense of unease. It's just some material. It could be absolutely nothing. And yet I don't like it at all. I'm aware of a prickling feeling at the base of my skull. An animal dread. Because suddenly I am certain that whatever is down there in that pit is not nothing.