Fleeced by Julia Wills Page A

curls as Rose’s, but cut to a sensible shoulder length. Then she picked up a pair of tweezers and plucked the artefact from under the microscope, a small disc of gold that gleamed in the light of the desk lamp. Laying it gently on her gloved palm she held it out to Rose.
    “Take a look at this.”
    Sighing, Rose stepped closer. It looked like a gold charm, the sort you might find on a bracelet, but this one was crumpled with age and carved with a picture of a giant beetle, its huge mandibles holding something round.
    “It was found in the black soil of the Amazon basin,” said her mother, stroking it with her gloved fingers. “I’ve dated it to around 1650. Rose, that suggests there were tribes on the Amazon much longer ago than people think. I’m going to publish!”
    “That’s great,” sighed Rose.
    Unfortunately, life with her mother had been likethis ever since Rose’s eleventh birthday, which was when her father, who’d been an archaeologist too, had left on an expedition to the Amazon jungle.
    And never returned.
    People deal with grief in lots of different ways and Rose’s mother’s way had been to devote her time single-mindedly to finding one special artefact from the Amazon rainforest, one unique and amazing thing, to research and name after her lost husband. Ever since he’d vanished she’d taken jobs at museum after museum, in city after city, towing Rose through school after school whilst she hunted for what could be the Theodore Pottersby-Weir’s Arrowhead, the Theodore Pottersby-Weir’s Chieftan’s Crown or the Theodore Pottersby-Weir’s Jaguar Mask. Rose glanced at the beetle on the crumpled gold disc and hoped that wasn’t it.
    Perhaps some of you might be a bit shocked by Rose’s attitude? Don’t be. Rose wasn’t a harsh or mean-spirited person and she loved her mother dearly. And of course she understood that her mother’s obsession with work distracted her from an overwhelming grief. She just wished it didn’t distract her quite so much from noticing her daughter.
    Rose missed her father desperately too. She still thought about him every day, missing his warmchestnut-brown eyes, his smile, his raucous laugh that filled a room, his bear hug that swept her off her feet. And, as she reminded herself now, she missed the way he’d have listened properly if she’d told him about Alex and Aries.
    “One was a talking sheep,” said Rose who now found herself speaking to her mother’s back.
    Slowly Dr Pottersby-Weir laid the charm on a velvet-lined tray and turned to face her daughter. “That’s an amusing story, Rosie. But you’ll never make an archaeologist if you don’t stick to the facts.”
    Rose rolled her eyes. “Look, what I actually came to tell you was that they damaged a statue when they arrived.”
    “A statue?” Her mother leaned forwards, suddenly interested. “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? Which one?”
    “The caryatid,” said Rose. “I told Ron and Eric that you’d know what to do because they were totally freaking out. I said you’d help them. They’ve dealt with the, er, vandals.”
    But her mother was barely listening. She stood up from the stool, the charm temporarily forgotten, and began pacing between the table and the wall.
    “Now, let me see… Athenian marble… dating from 490  BC … weathered for three thousand years.Hmm, she’ll have a porosity of three-point-four to three-point-five, just like an old tooth. Structure and density will need confirming.” She counted off her fingers as she spoke. “I’ll need to consult Professor Spyros Papadakis in Delphi to formulate the exact marble compound resin to rebuild her, contact the museum’s insurance holders to cover the costs of my flight and materials, issue a notice that all is in hand to the press, inform the Greek government.” She reached for her BlackBerry. “Rose, sweetie, I’m going to be busy. Can you amuse yourself for half an hour?”
    Rose nodded. Her