Don’t tell Pete, keep the box.

You know you should phone Pete and tell him about the box. He’ll accept it’s a mistake. Yes, he will. He can come over and collect it, or you can deliver it to the department.

But will the university accept it? No. No, they won’t. They’ll overrule Pete. They’ll claim you were stealing it. They’ll want to punish you. Pete couldn’t help you keep your job. He won’t be able to protect you from the university.

And what’s the university doing with the rest of the Snetterton Collection? Archiving it. Putting it away where no-one will look at it, because no-one has the time or interest to look at it. Before the job cuts only you were interested. After the job cuts, everyone will have even less time to look. The university only accepted the Snetterton Collection because it was a gift, and the university never turns down gifts.

You return this box, and it will sit in archives, gathering dust. Forgotten. Unexplored. The substitution of an empty box for a full one might never be noticed. If spotted, that’s probably years away.

If it stays with you, you could study it. You could carry on your work. There might be a book in it. This might be the opportunity.

It’s still painful to be so deceitful. Instinct tells you to tell. Morals tell you to tell. Anger tells the opposite. Fear tells the opposite.

You find yourself caught. Edging towards your phone. Putting it down. Unable to concentrate on anything else. The longer you don’t phone Pete, the more certain you know you won’t. You distract yourself with a large Chinese takeaway and examining your suit from the wardrobe. Yet all the time the open box sits on the table, tempting you. What box is it? What have you acquired?

At the top of the contents is the small notebook associated with the box. The antiquarian had written his notebooks based on themes, and you’d arraigned the boxes based on the notebooks. You dip into this notebook, with its familiar, barely legible writing. Oh, this is the weirdest box of the lot. It’s the box that contains the sex magic. The antiquarian’s speculations about it contents read like bad erotica.

You look deeper.

Beneath the notebook are two bronze bracelets. 5cm in diameter. Rims 1cm wide. They are embossed with strange abstract symbols, clearly of Celtic origin, possibly writing, although there is no evidence of Celtic writing, ultimately untranslatable. But the feeling there was meaning in the symbols had always tantalised you. Is that meant to be a phallus? That almost suggests two figures copulating. No, look harder and the clarity disappears. They’re just abstract symbols.

You remember discovering the antiquarian’s take on these bracelets. He called them the Bands of Cernunnos, and claimed they would transform the wearer into a sex god.

A ludicrous idea that had circulated the department, until people would visit to see them. And everyone who had seen them had slipped them over their wrists and laughingly had proclaimed themselves a sex god. They’d wiggle their hips and twirl their arms and nothing would happen. Except sometimes the bands fell off.

Yet you’d never tried them. You hadn’t seen the point. You had been embarrassed by the whole idea. If you tried would people believe you wanted to become a sex god? Would they mock you for believing in magic? Others could joke around. You didn’t.

Maybe you should now?