I

Nell sits in a plastic chair at the service station, turning the pomegranate half over in her hands. Dried blood dots the rind, where she cut herself preparing it at five o'clock in the morning. The two deep reds are almost indistinguishable.

Behind her, bodies churn around fast-food counters, bubbling with the stress of getting to their summer holiday lets at check-in time, or home to check the fish didn't die while they were away. The sounds are sharp and painful - her senses must be heightened in the heat. She looks back to the pomegranate. After packing her lunch so carefully, she brought this along. She could have chosen a nice, clean apple. Who takes a pomegranate on a road trip? But the thought of it rotting in the bowl for over six weeks was worse than the thought of bringing it as a snack, so here it is. Nell pulls a tissue from the dispenser and smudges off the blood, then folds the tissue back into a square. Better.

There's a shriek from the automatic doors. A family stumbles through, wiping their brows and fanning themselves with magazines. One of the children is bawling angry gibberish, its face almost as red as the jewel seed Nell pops into her mouth.

The tang pinches her tongue. As a kid she believed that if she swallowed a seed it would bed and sprout in her tummy, creep up her throat like ivy. As an adult she knows that her body will only ever be good for growing bacteria, and perhaps babies. Not that she feels a particular attraction to the idea at the moment. Orchids are loud in hue, but they don't scream. Sedge is sharp, but it doesn't grate on her mind. Nell cannot imagine her social media profiles reading: Botanist, mother.

The kid's face clots with mucus and tears. Its cries fill Nell's ears, even her vision. The world is pulsating and red. The mother tries talking, squatting down next to it, hugging it, shouting at it, her expressions unfolding from each other like nesting dolls. It, Nell thinks - she can't even assign it a human pronoun in her mind.

Nell's finger slips, squelches. Her rose-pink acrylics are sinking into the pulp between the seeds. She picks the flesh from under each perfect plastic oval, then stands. Her neighbour left a tray strewn with tissues and cardboard packaging, so she empties it into a nearby bin. Then she grabs another tissue, cleaning herself and the table until it really looks like nobody was ever there.

There is only half an hour left of the drive, which is a relief when her air conditioning barely works. Just half an hour, and she'll be standing in a field, staring down the trenches. She doesn't know how large or deep they are yet, so all she has in her mind is a twist of bone and branch, soil and flower.

As she passes the family, heading back to the car park, the kid and Nell flinch at the exact same moment as the mother's hand makes contact with its backside. Its screams stop. Nell's left glute burns in sympathy on the walk away.

*

Nell spritzes her wrists with jasmine and rose, picks the last of the pomegranate from her acrylics, and makes the right-hand turn back onto the M5. It has been a long time since she drove into Somerset, and she already feels strange, like a small, soft wildflower blown by an unexpectedly strong wind.

A few minutes before the junction turn-off, an incoming call pops up over her sat nav app. Nell checks the cars around her, which she tells herself is for road safety, and not to stall until her sister rings off.

"So you're here," Liz says when Nell inevitably answers. If they don't talk now, they will have to later.

Nell heightens the register of her voice, tries to find her usual singing tone. "Liz! Mum told you. I'm driving, can't talk long."

"In my direction, two weeks before Charlie's birthday. As always, I'm the last to know."

"You're always the last to ask," Nell says quietly. The words feel mean even as she says them, but it's too late now. She grits her teeth.

Liz's voice cools. "Try raising two kids, and see how much time you have to chase adult siblings."

The pile of reference books in the passenger seat shifts as she changes lanes, and Nell extends her left arm to keep it from falling. Potential responses to Liz tangle through her mind: that this dig could define her career, that she was asked for by name, or that Liz has never once visited her in Milton Keynes.

"Go on then, what are you doing back in our neck of the woods?"

She isn't here for the woods, Nell wants to say, but the wetlands. Flat, open fields languishing for miles, only interrupted by spatters of houses or the ripple of a small hill. The acid soak of a coastal plain. Good for preserving bodies.

"A dig. The burial that came up near Shapwick, after the winter floods. With the bodies wrapped in flowers. It was on TV."

"What happened to your old job?" Liz's tone changes for her daughter. "No no, darling, not now."

Nell hasn't told anyone about the redundancy. Somewhere in her brain is a kernel of relief, the relief of never again having to sort the rocks torn up by city developers. But the shame is riper, fleshier. She got comfortable labelling things until her knuckles felt like they were coming through her skin, but she was not good enough to keep on. If this dig hadn't miraculously shown up, she'd have nothing.

The book at the top of the pile slides and thuds into the footwell. While Liz struggles against her daughter Charlie's tantrum, Nell stares at the passenger seat. Then, without warning, her finger gravitates to the middle of the remaining books. She touches the one she wrote a chapter for, The Secret Life of Wildflowers, and pushes until the whole pile comes down. Covers splay, pages bend, the impact vibrating through the car. It feels horrible and satisfying at once, to make a mess but also have the mess over with. Nobody will see, anyway. She returns both hands to the wheel and focuses on the road.

Liz and Charlie bicker. "Angel, what did we say about waiting until I'm done on the phone? I'm trying to convince your Auntie Elinor to come to your birthday party. Elinor. You might as well not exist to Charlie and Genie. It's so sad."

Nell rolls down the window to let in blustering warm air.

"Elinor. God, why is everyone I talk to a brick wall?"

"I'm listening. Of course I'll come." Nell doesn't know if she will, but it's easier to lie than to send Liz into one of her panics.

"That's it! Time to go to your room for some quiet thinking, Charlie!"

They say something like a goodbye. The engine hums through Nell's sit bones and nausea wreaths in her stomach.

They lived near Glastonbury as kids - the house Liz still lives in - but rarely explored the countryside around them. If they did, their parents would lead, instructing the girls to fit each small foot into their larger boot marks. The ground around their parents' footsteps was a thick sludge, hungry to slip them up. That was how their mother talked. Be careful, don't touch that, god, why would you do that? It got worse after a hospital stay when Nell was eight and Liz four, because, of course, when one was sick they were both sick. As children they were like two versions of the same girl. Now, every time they talk, Liz has drifted a little further away.

Sweat seeps down the back of Nell's neck. It's been a while since she thought about the roots that grew her. No, that's not the right analogy: stamen would be more accurate. But stamens don't enmesh. They breathe their offspring away. Such a gentle approach must exist somewhere, even if it's hard for her to imagine. But surely such parenting would craft creatures without edges - creatures that ooze and trample? She was trained to smile, step lightly, never to trample in the presence of others. For all she'd do differently from her parents, at least she knows where her edges are.

She veers onto the slip past the Huntspill River and turns onto a narrow country lane. The fields are like shattered bottle glass, trees and hedges lining uneven meadows. The concrete underneath her is smooth, recently resurfaced, and the heat shuddering off it distorts her vision whenever the car slows. Deeper beneath: carbon-rich earth. The sort that comes apart in your fingers, gets under your nails and marks your nail beds like crescent moons of ink. She can't decide if refreshing her acrylics last week was a great idea (they would conceal any trapped dirt) or a terrible one (dirt means bacteria, bacteria could mean a nasty surprise if she couldn't get them redone for six weeks). But she had already made the...