Racing along collapsing rope bridges. Swinging on vines over poison-tipped spikes. Fending off armies of centaurs. There was never a typical day in the life of a tomb raider. Cradling an apple-shaped portal key while escaping from a horde of curious academics, however, was a first for me.

Diana and I charged towards the Royal Institution's French windows in lock-step, our boots crashing on marble as we shoved chairs and flipped lecterns in our wake. Locked doors greeted us. Diana skidded to a halt with a cry of "Hera's grace!"

Thick eyebrows squished. Colossal thighs flexed. Diana hurled herself at the French windows, sending them crashing open amid a cloud of shattered glass and crooked mullions. We ploughed across the gardens and into a thicket of shrubbery that backed onto the building's outer wall, a Victorian brick ten-footer topped with barbed wire.

Nowhere else to turn, I gripped the apple and begged the Olympian Gods to transport us somewhere, anywhere, beyond the Royal Institution's walls. The blasted fruit just sat there like a stupidly expensive paperweight.

"If you want to escape, follow me," a husky voice rumbled from behind a privet. An archaeologist appeared — and a very pretty one at that — and beckoned us towards her. Black dress, black boots and black COVID mask, I hadn't seen her among the gaggle of archaeologists at dinner; I'd certainly have noticed the densely-packed tattoo sleeves and trailing braids had she been there.

Diana tugged at my arm to flee from the woman, but my tomb raider blood fizzed with the urge to free the apple from the Royal Institution before any tweedy diggers commandeered it for the Ashmolean. I nodded my head, a plea for Diana to trust me. She stood back with pursed lips as the black-clad woman led us through a thicket of cow parsley to a little door set into the wall on rusty hinges. Unused for decades, a curtain of thick ivy had grown all over it. Perfect. Diana began to crack joints and take a run-up.

"Allow me, Diana." I'd been shunning my vandalism duties since Diana had arrived. I rushed headlong at the door, launching into a spinning kick that sent mouldy splinters flying. Planks of wood and ropes of ivy came to rest halfway across New Bond Street.

"By the great Sappho!" The look on Diana's face had my heart soaring.

The goth archaeologist led us across the road, up a steel fire escape behind one of the fancier jewellery shops, and across the windy rooftops and chimneypots of the Mayfair night. 

No sooner had I caught my breath on a crumbling ledge overlooking The Ritz than Diana's arms were wrapped around me, the leaden weight of a cold apple pressing into my hip as she hugged me tight. I inspected her limbs, rubbing at the scattered cuts and bruises from the night's chaos.

Diana's eyes locked onto mine, her smile so beautiful that my heart quivered in my chest. "I'm a demi-goddess, Lara. You don't need to worry about me."

"But I do," I whispered. My face was inches away from Diana's, her breaths fast and hot against my lips. "Very much."

Our archaeologist saviour pranced onto the masonry at the roof edge, breaking the little spell that Diana had woven around us. My skin shivered with Diana's absence as she took a step away from me across the roof.

"Just getting us some dinner, ladies. Back in a mo'."

"Thanks!" I called at the lady as she dipped below the London skyline.

I edged back to Diana, but she was in her own world, adrenaline succumbing to the whirling of her tired mind. "Trying to get me home is putting you in so much danger."

"I used the apple as a portal when I brought you here. I just need to practice opening that portal again. I'll send you home, then I'll chuck that blasted thing into the sea."

Diana's face looked like she'd summoned all of Zeus's thunder as she eyed the archaeolo-goth disappearing towards the Ritz. "We can't trust her!"

I knew that. But we had no choice. 

Diana set the apple onto the roof. It looked dull and almost black in the dim starless evening, despite the glimmer of strip-lighting from myriad jewellery shops below. 

"Diana, I prefer our odds against one archaeologist than a hundred. Besides, I didn't know that they made archaeologists like that."

"She could be trying to steal the apple too, for this Ashmolean Museum of yours, and from there, anyone could take it."

"It's not my museum, besides—"

But Diana wasn't listening. A flyer had fluttered on the breeze into her lap. An advert for the British Museum's refurbished display of the Elgin Marbles. Curses.

Diana pressed the crumpled flyer flat on her thigh, beautiful eyes widening with that same furious horror as when I'd seen her battling Greek infantrymen. "What in Hera's name is the entire front façade of the Parthenon doing in London? What happened?"

I waved a dismissive hand. "Don't worry. The rest of the Parthenon is still standing. Sultan Selim gave those marbles to Lord Elgin as a gift over two hundred years ago, when Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire."

"So, why didn't the marbles get sent back to Greece when the Ottomans left?"

"Diana, they've been here for so long—"

"They were on the Acropolis a lot longer," she said, each syllable enunciated dangerously slowly.

My insides squirmed. Diana had that same crazed look about her as when she almost ran me through with a sword on the day we met. I let out a nervous chuckle and waved my arms about in a hopeless effort to convey the complexity of Lord Elgin's gift. "The Sultan would have only used them as building materials."

Diana looked positively murderous. "Perhaps. But he doesn't rule Greece anymore. So why haven't the marbles gone back?"

My chuckle died down to a guilty hum. "Well, if we gave back those marbles, we'd have to give back so many other artefacts. All museums around the world would end up doing the same. Archaeologists would be out of a job, for a start. And the British Museum and the Ashmolean would be totally empty save a few Roman coins and Queen Victoria's dentures."

Diana slid a throwing star from Dad's jacket and tossed it lazily. It embedded itself into the wall opposite with a thud. "Exactly."

My jaw flapped, unable to retort, when the aroma of malt vinegar began to tease my nostrils. The pretty stranger hopped over the roof's sandstone edge and tossed a white paper bundle into Diana's arms.

Diana sniffed at the paper, her nose wrinkling. "What is this?"

"The most divine dinner, Your Highness. Chips anointed in vinegar," the goth unwrapped her bundle with the flick of a fine brown wrist, "and a saveloy."

An identical white paper bundle hit me in the chest. I peeled back a leaf of paper, a cloud of malty steam rising. "Bloody Norah, these smell exactly like Winston's chips."

"You just ate a tray of roast potatoes, Lara," Diana groaned into her bundle. She levelled a wooden spork at the archaeolo-goth. "And who are you, exactly?"

The black-clad woman removed her COVID mask to reveal a rather lovely face. "Hello, Lara."

"Hello, er..." I recognised the dark lady before me, but I couldn't quite place her. A vague recollection of seeing her in lectures at Oxford surfaced from my undergraduate days. But I couldn't for the life of me recall her name.

"Amanda. Amanda Evert."

"Ah, yes, of course! Amanda! I... er..."

She seemed to collect herself and smiled, sticking out a bangled wrist for me to shake. Her nails were painted black. "It's all right, Lara. I didn't really expect you to remember me after so long."

Cobwebbed memories of lectures and essays resurfaced from my mind's cellar. I was certain that this woman had been on a few archaeology field trips with me. Her goth look hadn't been there at the time; she'd been rather more of a background pastel pashmina before, if I remembered correctly. "I do remember you. We were on the Peru fieldtrip together. Weren't we?"

"Well, I did look different back then. Bit of a nobody, really."

"It's lovely to catch up again. And thanks for helping us. Those rotters are hell-bent on donating our apple to the Ashmolean."

"Can we go?" In the time it had taken me to down a few chips, Diana had gobbled her saveloy and had dashed her chips onto the roof, where they were being devoured by a gang of gulls.

"Don't worry. If anyone asks," Amanda pointed a black-painted digit at the apple, "I didn't see that thing. Can't you just take it back to the Hesperides, Your Highness? Is that why you're here?"

"I'm stuck in this realm. I worry that I will never get home."

"I'll get you home! I may be a tomb raider, but you're the one treasure I promise to return safely home. Besides," I inched towards Diana and reached out a tentative hand, "if you were stuck here with me, would it be so bad?"

Diana shook her head, beautiful black waves cascading around. "I'm sorry, Lara. I need to go home."

Loyal, stoic, bloody gorgeous Diana. Determined to return to eternal Amazonomachy. I didn't blame her. There was nothing that this realm could offer her. Nothing that I could offer her, except for a life of searching for Mum, a life confined to the shadows cast by centuries of tomb raiders.

Suddenly exhausted, I crawled onto the masonry at the roof's edge. "Let's get the Guildford train from Waterloo. This cursed fruit needs a bloody good talking to."

~~☆~~

The roar of Uncle Conrad's Landrover spitting up gravel in the drive startled me from my lunch. I looked up to see him shove two paparazzi out of the portico before slamming the front door shut.

"Barbarians!" He stormed in, his face like a wet weekend in Chalfont St Peter. "Why are you wasting time eating at this time of crisis?"

Cross-legged with my plate on the floor, I resumed excavating my baked potato. "You said I should learn to cook, so I've cooked. I've got microwave biryani if you prefer."

He slapped a copy of The Times onto the hall table and slumped into the armchair with his face in his hands. "We're ruined. We're bloody ruined. And why are you camped out in here?"

"If Abbingdon is going to be overrun with billionaire industrialists and dodgy governments wanting the apple the moment they see The Times, I might as well be waiting for them in the hall. And," I jutted my chin at the hall window, "I can watch Diana from here."

Uncle Conrad followed my gaze through the window. It looked out onto a rather sweaty Diana busy sparring with the statues in the kitchen garden.

"She's bloody perfect, isn't she?"

"I know, Uncle. What's in the paper?"

"Paparazzi shots of that cursed apple with you and Diana hanging from the ceiling of the Royal Institution behind it. I'm tempted to drive to Brighton and chuck that bloody apple into the sea. Thank God you scarpered. Where did you go?"

"Amanda Evert helped us to escape."

Uncle Conrad craned his neck towards the hall window, a perfect vantage point to observe Diana throwing a spinning kick at the crumbling buttress that separated the kitchen garden from the orchard. "Who's Amanda Evert?"

"Black, beautiful, braided hair, wears a lot of lace. She was at the J.A.R dinner. She's an old friend of mine from Oxford actually."

"I've never heard of any Amanda Evert in archaeology circles, and I hate to be harsh, darling, but you don't have any friends. Since our Winston passed, it's just been Diana watching out for you."

"I opened a portal once, when Diana came. Maybe I can do it again. If I get better at it, I could open portals to anywhere. I wouldn't ever need money to travel! I could—"

Uncle Conrad bristled. "Lara," he whispered. "Don't."

"With a portal I could check every neighbourhood in Kathmandu, every ridge on Everest. I could find her. If I—"

"Lara, listen to yourself. You're living in the past. She's gone. If this portal thing doesn't work, you'll go through grief all over again."

I picked up my knife and fork with a sigh. "And if it does work?"

"It doesn't matter. You can't spend the rest of your life trying to rewrite history. You should be thinking about your future. You could be happy. With Diana."

My fork screeched across porcelain, sending baked beans and flecks of Red Leicester flying.

"Not your business, Uncle." I hadn't exactly been subtle with my decade of daydreaming over a paper representation of Diana in Bunty's, followed by my fawning over the real-life version of her years later. "I never even had the most minuscule chance with her. She's a demi-goddess."

"You're not immortal, but you're a very resourceful woman, Lara. And she obviously cares very much about you."

"She hates me because of the whole... tomb raiding thing."

Uncle Conrad guffawed into his palms. "Lara, the number of times I've told you to give up your bloody job. It doesn't define you. It's always just been a vehicle for you escape from..." he waved his arms around Abbingdon's mould-riddled hall, "...all this."

"What's wrong with my job? And my house?"

"The last thing I want is for you to stop talking to me for another year. But... have you never imagined what kind of archaeologist you could be? I'm wedded to British digs, but you? You've discovered so many new archaeological sites all over the globe. You could help so many nations piece together their past ages, help them to celebrate their peoples' lives and cultures. You weren't born a tomb raider. You did it because it was the one thing that never changed, in a childhood that was turned upside-down. And it's so dangerous that you never have time to think about what else you could be. Maybe that was why your father did it to. Diana doesn't hate you. She just knows what you're capable of."

I'd always thought that when I hung up my pistols and dig tools that I'd retire to some distant escape. It hadn't occurred to me that the job was the escape. I missed Mum. And Dad, in a way. And now, Winston. And I was soon to start missing Diana too. She'd been with me for no more than a week, yet the thought of being without her was like a knife to my heart. Of course, it had been longer than a week. My childhood adoration and my teenage fantasies had carried me away from grief, but nothing had prepared me for a week with Diana's wisdom and care. As with the Amazons, she had always been my Queen.

"It's hopeless anyway. Diana's rather... active in the bedroom department. And I'm not. So, she wouldn't want me."

"Darling," Uncle Conrad slid out of the armchair and joined me on the rug, "this is hardly the conversation you want to have with your uncle, but just because you're asexual doesn't mean that you can't have Diana. I know you're clutching at everything as an excuse to avoid her. Don't use that. There are other possible futures for you beyond the one where you're either tomb-raiding to stop feeling anything, or searching for your Mum because you're feeling too much. Just show Diana who you are. Please."

"What's the point if she's going home to fight her endless war?"

"Give her something better to fight for." He gazed out of the hall window. "She's out there protecting your home. While she's here, you've been her entire kingdom."

My eyes followed, but Diana seemed to have disappeared from view, replaced by the roar of a diesel engine. I ran outside to find Sam Nishimura tottering out of a Landrover, along with two eager paps with telephotos at the ready. Diana appeared from the kitchen garden and swept towards Sam, her face a stormcloud of rage.

Uncle Conrad followed hard on Diana's heels, teeth gnashing. "Send your bloody tribe away."

"Conrad, darling." Sam smiled, slid a phone out of her handbag and began to record him on video. "Where are the rioters, then? We were told that Abbingdon Museum was being raided."

"Raided?" Uncle Conrad waved his arms, taking in the portico and box hedges. "There's nobody here."

Sam pulled a face, and began to scroll through her phone with manic fervour. "There must be. We were tipped off that—"

"Tipped off? By whom?" My heart dropped into my feet. The apple. "It's a distraction. Diana! My room!"

Through the hall, through the breakfast room, up the stairs, through the study, to my bedroom. Why was my house so bloody massive? I was about to charge into my room when Diana held me back with a broad hand. She inched the door open, fists ready. My room was utterly ransacked. 

I stalked to the bed, my heart withering as I reached under my pillow. The apple was gone. My bedroom window hung open, and I leant out just in time to make out a black-clad figure diving into the back of a van parked some way down the lane, too far away for the bewildered paparazzi on the lawn to even take a photo.

I yelled down to the front courtyard, "Uncle! Follow that van!"

Uncle Conrad and Sam leapt into the Landrover, but it was too late. The van was nowhere to be seen by the time they'd made it from the lane to Guildford Road.

Diana crashed onto the lawn in a flurry of hot tears. I slid shaking arms around her.

My phone buzzed with an incoming call. Unknown number. I held it to my ear,  gesturing at a whimpering Diana to sit close and listen.

"I think it's time you came to visit."

"Who are you?" Not that I didn't know exactly who'd just stolen the apple, and who was going to make me beg for it.

"Jacqueline Natla."

---------------------

Author's Notes:

Saveloy - a spiced sausage often bought from a chip-shop and served with chips

Pashmina - Indian goatwool scarf with a very fine weave, popularly worn by posh English ladies

Red Leicester - orange-coloured mild cheese popular in the UK because of its low melting point, making it ideal for grating onto hot food