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Chapter 3

The ominous glow of the full moon had surrendered to the harsh spring sunlight by the time Holly was shocked into consciousness by someone banging on the front door. Jumping from her bed, she ignored the discarded clothes on the floor and grabbed her dressing gown. Her body ached all over as she made her way downstairs.

‘Sorry, Billy, I must have slept in,’ she apologized as she rubbed the last remnants of sleep from her eyes.

‘Now, now, Mrs Corrigan,’ tutted Billy. ‘You can’t go answering the door in your slinky nightie when there are builders around, you’ll have my lads dropping hammers on their toes.’

‘It’s an old dressing gown, Billy, and I think I’m more likely to frighten them off than anything else,’ retorted Holly. She knew she must look a state but was silently grateful for Billy’s gallantry as she tried to scrape back her hair into some kind of order.

Billy’s mischievous smile dropped and his playful tone was replaced by one of concern. ‘Hey, what happened to your face?’ he asked.

Holly leaned back and took a look at herself in the hallway mirror. The right side of her cheek was bruised and grazed. ‘It’s nothing,’ Holly said in a robotic tone as the memory of her moonlit walkabout replayed in her mind for the first time since waking.

‘If that man of yours has been knocking you about then we’ll be having serious words when he gets back,’ Billy growled.

‘Don’t be daft,’ Holly said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘I’m just a weak and feeble woman who can’t be trusted on her own. I tripped in the garden, that’s all.’

‘Well, it sounds like it was a good idea of mine to send Jocelyn around. I knew you’d need looking after.’

Holly was in no mood for Billy’s usual banter, but if she didn’t appear her usual self, who knew who else he would be sending around to check on her.

‘I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, but yes, it was a very good idea. She’s a lovely lady,’ replied Holly with a smile that was more genuine this time.

‘You need to get out more, visit people.’

‘Now if I promise I will, could you stop nagging and get on with your work?’

Billy saluted. ‘I aim to please. We should have the internal work finished by the end of the week, so if you want to start thinking about those bells and whistles you wanted to add, now would be a good time. After that, if there’s anything else you need, you only have to ask.’

‘Is that a proposition, Billy?’ gasped Holly with a half smile.

Billy actually blushed. ‘Erm, well, I was actually thinking, well, what I meant was, erm, the garden could do with a proper makeover. We don’t want any more accidents, do we?’ he stammered.

Holly shivered as she recalled the sensation of kneeling on the soft lawn. ‘Thanks, Billy, but I’m not sure I want to let Tom off the hook with that particular job just yet.’

She brought her chat with Billy to a swift end, promising to make him and his lads a nice cup of tea. With Billy dispatched to the studio, Holly took another look at her reflection in the mirror. She wanted desperately to believe that the events of the previous night had just been a weird and not-so-wonderful nightmare, but the physical evidence was difficult to dismiss.

As she went through the motions of getting showered and dressed, her mind remained focused on finding a rational explanation for what had happened the night before. There was absolutely no doubt that she had left the house during the night. The open kitchen door and the wet jog pants proved without a doubt that she had gone into the garden. The wooden box left abandoned on the kitchen table confirmed that she had been playing with the moondial. But at what point did reality end and her imagination take over?

Everything had a rational explanation up until the point when she had banged her head. Mild concussion might explain her bizarre vision of the future; in fact, it was the only explanation Holly was willing to consider.

Refusing to waste any more time thinking about the hallucination, she readied herself for a full day’s work. She went downstairs and made the promised pot of tea for the builders and then a strong cup of coffee for herself. She set out the tools of her trade on the kitchen table, determined to spend the day focused on Mrs Bronson’s commission. Being organized and disciplined sometimes conflicted with her creativity, but today she needed something to concentrate her mind on. No distractions.

Tom phoned. There were some distractions that were an exception to the rule and Holly needed the comfort from simply hearing his voice.

‘Good morning, my light, my life,’ Tom chirped.

‘Good morning, my compass, my anchor,’ replied Holly, and she was surprised at how relieved she was to have Tom hear and acknowledge her. She thought of the man she had seen the night before, bereft and lost, but quickly pushed the image from her mind.

‘Haven’t disturbed you, have I?’ Tom asked.

‘No, not at all. You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve missed you.’

‘Not got the substitute installed yet, then?’ Tom asked playfully.

Holly smiled, enjoying the normality of the conversation. The tension she had been carrying with her all morning slipped from her body. ‘It was a bit fraught earlier,’ she told Tom, ‘but I’ve managed to kick the rugby team out of my bed.’

‘Only one rugby team? Your stamina must be slipping.’

‘So how about you? Sourced out a string of hussies to keep you busy?’

‘Oh, there was extensive auditioning last night but no one compares to you.’

‘I miss you,’ Holly whispered, unable to keep up the pretence any longer.

‘I miss you too.’

‘I don’t think I can bear to be away from you for so long. To hell with Mrs Bronson, I should come and join you.’

There was the longest silence. Holly sensed Tom’s agreement but neither of them wanted to break their resolve to see it through.

‘No, ignore me,’ Holly added quickly before Tom could answer. ‘I’ve had a bad night, that’s all and it’s only been one day. I’ll be fine, honest. It’ll take a few days for me to settle and after all, I’ve got this damned commission to do. Throwing in the towel just isn’t an option. I’ve only got today and tomorrow left to get the designs right. I’ll throw myself into my work and I’ll be fine. Ignore me. I’ll be fine. Honest.’

‘Holly.’

‘Yes?’

‘You’re rambling.’

Holly sighed. ‘Sorry.’

‘So didn’t you have a good night?’

‘Now that’s an understatement.’ Holly paused, not sure about how much she could tell Tom without worrying him. ‘Now don’t go freaking out, but I had a bit of an accident and no, I don’t mean I wet the bed.’ She hoped the levity in her voice sounded genuine.

‘What kind of accident? Are you OK?’ Tom’s voice was laced with anxiety.

Holly did a quick editing exercise in her mind. Tom was level-headed about most things, but he’d be sending her off for a brain scan if she mentioned hallucinations. ‘I was in the garden and slipped. It’s just a graze on the cheek, nothing major.’

‘You banged your head? Did you knock yourself out? Did you lose consciousness?’

‘I watch the medical dramas too, you know. No, I didn’t lose consciousness. No concussion, doctor, honest,’ Holly said with an air of confidence she didn’t feel. ‘Although I may have dented the moondial with my head.’

‘What do you mean the moondial? Don’t you mean the sundial? Are you sure that knock to the head didn’t affect your senses?’

‘I’m fine,’ repeated Holly, a little too curtly. Tom was closer to the truth than he realized. ‘It was Jocelyn who called it a moondial and she should know, she lived here first.’

Holly had already told Tom all about her unexpected visitor and mentioning Jocelyn again was a good way to change the subject. Holly hadn’t exactly lied to Tom about her fall but she hadn’t told him the whole truth either. ‘She wasn’t very impressed with the rest of the garden though and I was actually embarrassed. So when are you going to spend time at home long enough to get it sorted?’ she asked.

It was Tom’s turn to be cagey, which eased Holly’s conscience. He told her there was still lots of upheaval at the studio and reminded her that everyone there was fighting to keep their job. Demanding where he went and what he did simply wasn’t an option.

They chatted a while, until eventually work couldn’t be put off any longer for either of them. Holly put the phone down and reluctantly picked up her sketch pad. Her plan was to continue to work up more sketches based on the two designs she had already settled on.

When she opened her sketchbook to the first of her drawings, the one of a mother holding a baby, her eyes were immediately drawn to the image of the baby. Her sketch had only subtle suggestions of form but even so, when she traced the baby’s face with her finger it brought to mind the baby of her hallucination. Libby. With a warm rush of emotion, she recalled the moment that she had looked into Libby’s eyes and felt an instant connection. Was this what maternal instinct felt like, she wondered, or was she just desperately trying to justify Tom’s belief in her?

Holly’s gaze turned to the figure of the mother. With new eyes, the pose was all wrong. The figure she had sketched was holding the baby tentatively, almost as if it were a box of spiders ready to crawl up her arm. Holly scored a line through the drawing before she knew what she was doing. Then she turned to the second sketch, which she had thought was the most promising in terms of concept. She still liked the spiralling form of the mother spinning the baby around, but again the pose seemed all wrong and the mother might just as well be twirling her handbag. She scored a line through this drawing too.

With a flutter of panic, Holly knew the pressure was on and she was going to have to work solidly for the next two days to get her proposal ready in time.

The trip to London was a dramatic gear change from the country life Holly was slowly becoming accustomed to. She left the serenity of the village to catch the early morning train from a nearby town and then battled in vain for a seat, losing it to one of the more seasoned commuters.

The meeting with Mrs Bronson was to take place at the gallery where Holly exhibited and sold her sculptures. It was a small gallery but ideal for her work, partially because of its prime position and select clientele, and partially because she worked well with the proprietor, Sam Peterson. Sam had been extremely supportive of her fledgling career when she had first arrived in London and had played a large part in Holly’s success as an artist.

Holly had met Sam through one of the many part-time jobs she had taken after leaving art college. She had worked for a pet-care agency, walking dogs, babysitting rabbits and, in Sam’s case, feeding his cats while he was away on one of his many tropical holidays with his partner James. Sam had taken a keen interest in her artwork and had not only encouraged her to keep up with her art after she left college but had eventually offered to exhibit her work in his gallery.

It was a short journey to the gallery on the tube and then on through the bustling crowds, but Holly was starting to feel energized by the hustle and bustle. She was wearing a smart fifties-style tunic dress with matching jacket. The outfit was a shade of pale blue that set off her long blonde hair, which was swept back off her face with a matching headband. It had been a while since Holly had worn something other than jeans and T-shirt, and dressing up made her feel part of the crowd again.

She needed all the energy she could muster, because she was practically running on empty. She had worked nonstop on her designs, sketching into the wee small hours of the night with nothing to keep her company except the waning moon, which peeped through the kitchen window like a brooding monster, narrowing its eye in concentration over Holly’s shoulder.

Whilst she had managed to keep most of the details of her hallucination out of her thoughts, she couldn’t quite erase the picture of Libby from her mind’s eye. She used this to her advantage and breathed new life into the sketches she was creating. At long last, Holly felt a connection with the art piece she was trying to create. The downside to this was that she had also developed a connection with Libby. She may have only been a figment of her imagination, but Libby was the first baby that Holly hadn’t been terrified of, the first baby she had wanted to reach out and hold. Libby had sneaked into her heart and there was a part of Holly that almost wished that she was real.

The tinkling of the brass bell over the door announced Holly’s arrival at the gallery. The expanse of space that greeted her was bright and modern. White walls reflected the natural light streaming from the glass-fronted gallery, while strategically placed spotlights picked up the selection of brightly coloured and contrasting art pieces to entice the buyers.

The receptionist waved to her and picked up the phone, no doubt announcing her arrival to Sam. As Holly waited, she took the opportunity to do a quick stocktake of the work she had on display and to check out the competition. Holly sold a range of small sculptures through the gallery; some were figures, others more conceptual, but all had Holly’s distinctive style of mixing contrasting textures and colour. Holly’s work seemed to be becoming more commercial and it was the income from this type of work that paid for her and Tom’s luxuries. Holly felt a twinge of disappointment as she noted that only a few pieces of her work were being displayed in this front-of-house section of the gallery.

‘Looking for something?’ came a soft voice from behind her. Holly turned around to be greeted by the portly features of a middle-aged man with an obvious obsession for tweed.

‘Hello, Sam,’ beamed Holly, giving her old friend a kiss on each cheek. ‘I was just looking for some art pieces by the up-and-coming artist Holly Corrigan, but for the life of me I can’t see the kind of collection I was hoping for. Keeping them in a darkened room somewhere, are you?’

‘Oh, Holly, Holly, Holly. What suspicious creatures you countryfolk are,’ he admonished. ‘So you think as soon as you traded in your stilettos for wellies, I’d be putting your artwork out to grass too, do you?’

‘Well …’ grimaced Holly, feeling guilty that she would even suggest that Sam wasn’t taking care of her best interests.

‘There’s one of your pieces over there,’ Sam sniffed, pointing to the window front. Holly wasn’t sure if his stance reminded her of a school teacher or an air steward.

‘Another to the right there and two to the left, there and there.’

Definitely air steward, thought Holly suppressing a grin. ‘And the rest?’

‘S-O-L-D, sold!’

‘All of them?’ gasped Holly.

‘All of them,’ confirmed Sam. ‘The recession is officially over. You heard it here first.’

Holly grabbed his arms and they did a little celebratory jig in the middle of the gallery.

‘Well done, Sam!’

‘Well done, Holly!’ corrected Sam. He stopped still and peered at Holly’s face. ‘Is that a black eye I see beneath the camouflage of make-up? Has that man of yours been beating you up?’

‘Why does everyone keep saying that!’ demanded Holly. ‘Of course he didn’t. I fell in the garden, that’s all.’

‘Hmm,’ replied Sam. ‘Well, you can tell me all about your new country life later. First we need to deal with your favourite client,’ he whispered.

‘Oh, God, is she here already?’ Holly broke out into a cold sweat at the thought of what she was about to face. ‘Is Bronson Junior with her?’

‘Thankfully not,’ replied Sam, who shared Holly’s relief.

Holly was of course referring to Mrs Bronson’s offspring or, as Holly tended to view the baby, her latest fashion accessory. Holly might not be an expert in maternal matters, but each time she saw Mrs Bronson with her son it brought to mind a precocious child playing with a new kitten. She wouldn’t have been surprised if her client had turned up with the poor child peaking out of one of her oversized handbags.

‘Onwards and upwards,’ Sam told her, directing her up the stairs to his private office.

The meeting with Mrs Bronson went better than expected. Holly had two fully worked up designs to show her client, but there was only one that she felt able to put her heart into and fortunately for her it was the one Mrs Bronson opted for. It was a spiralling form, depicting not just a mother cradling a baby in her arms, but a whole series of figures below them, symbolizing past generations swirling up through the black stone base towards the two white figures. She would still need to complete a scaled-down version first of all for Mrs Bronson to sign off, but for Holly the hardest part was now over with. She had managed to create the concept and she was as happy with it as she could be under the circumstances and given the struggles she had put herself through.

The bell above the door of the gallery settled into silence and both Holly and Sam breathed a sigh of relief as Mrs Bronson disappeared into the distance.

‘Well, that went well,’ Holly said cautiously.

‘Don’t sound so surprised, the design is beautiful. Well done, you. I know it can’t have been easy.’ Sam knew Holly better than most and he knew all about her troubled childhood. ‘I did wonder if it was the right thing for you to take on, but you pulled it off. I don’t think I could have bluffed my way through it. Remind me never to play poker with you.’

‘What do you mean, bluff?’ Holly demanded, although she knew exactly what he meant.

‘Holly, I love you dearly, but, well, you’re not exactly mother-making material, are you? To pull off an art piece of this scale it takes some insight into all that mother-and-child nonsense and I’m afraid you’re just as bad as me: clueless on the subject.’

‘New home, new life. Who says I’m not mother-making material?’ Holly argued. She could feel the colour rising in her face. A week ago she would have agreed wholeheartedly with Sam, they’d had similar conversations before. But now, with Libby’s face appearing like a watermark over everything she saw, Holly didn’t want to hear it.

Sam laughed and hugged her to him. ‘Maybe you’re right, and I hope you are. Just promise me one thing …’

‘What’s that?’ Holly asked suspiciously as she unravelled herself from his embrace.

‘For goodness’ sake, don’t bring it with you when you come visit. What’s made in the country, stays in the country.’

‘I promise!’ laughed Holly. ‘Now enough of this, let’s get down to business. How am I going to replenish your stock?’

Although she loved the idea that her work was becoming sought after, she wasn’t prepared to simply churn out sculptures on a conveyor belt to meet demand. Taking on Mrs Bronson’s commission had been bad enough. Sam was persuasive however so she went through some ideas with him and promised to get to work on them if time allowed, once her studio was up and running in the next week or so. In truth, a heavy workload was going to be a welcome distraction during Tom’s absence.

Sam did his best to persuade Holly to stay longer but she was on a mission. She had one more job to do before she left for home. Holly said her goodbyes and then weaved her way back across London, heading for the British Library, where she hoped to get some inspiration for the type of stone she would use in Mrs Bronson’s sculpture. At least, that was the reason she kept giving herself.

The library was vast and Holly would have felt lost if she hadn’t already spent countless hours if not days searching through its obsessively stacked and indexed treasures. She wasted no time in tracking down the reference books she needed to decide upon the stone and even less time on deciding which type of stone to use. Holly closed the last book she had been leafing through and stacked it up with the rest on the reading desk she was occupying. She tapped her fingers distractedly on the stack of books. She hadn’t fooled herself. She had already known she would choose black marble for the base of her sculpture, it was the obvious choice, and the upper section would be formed from clay.

A man at the next table cleared his throat and stared meaningfully at Holly. Holly’s hand froze mid tap. She hadn’t realized she had been tapping so loudly. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed.

Holly returned her books and asked a library assistant for help looking up any records of Hardmonton Hall. It wasn’t the Hall that interested her as much as it was the origins of the moondial. Her desire to find out more about the dial had nothing to do with her hallucination, she told herself, she was simply doing research on what was a very interesting, if not mysterious, centrepiece in her garden. It took Holly quite a while, with the occasional direction from one very patient and helpful assistant, to gather all of two books on the subject. Sitting back at her reading desk, Holly opened the first book. It was a collected history of English architecture, specializing in Tudor manor houses, and Hardmonton Hall was listed in its index. Holly flicked through until she came to the relevant section. There were only a handful of pages devoted to the Hall, most of which were illustrations and plans of the buildings and grounds. It was in a plan of the ornate gardens that flowed from the back of the Hall that Holly eventually found evidence of the moondial. It was, or had been, located in what appeared to be a large stone circle. The circle was divided into four segments with an inner circle where the moondial would have been sited. From this centrepiece, four wide stone paths led outwards, separated by flower beds of some sort.

The second book was a wild card and Holly held out little hope that it would uncover any more of the dial’s history. It was a book on great archaeological expeditions in the nineteenth century and although there was no reference to the Hall itself, there was a reference to one of the previous Lord Hardmontons. Leafing through the book, Holly found the chapter she was looking for. She frowned as she skimmed through page after page of text. Charles Hardmonton had been a renowned explorer involved in expeditions all over the world and, as interesting as this local history was to Holly, she could feel a growing frustration building inside her.

Her impatience grew as she tracked Lord Hardmonton’s adventures from one side of the globe to the other and she prepared herself for disappointment as she turned each page. In a fit of pique, she skipped through to the last paragraph. Lord Hardmonton’s career as an explorer had come to an abrupt end when he fell out of favour with his sponsors during his last recorded expedition to central Mexico in search the Temple of Coyolxauhqui, the Aztec moon goddess.

Holly’s eyes narrowed in concentration as she read the name again. Could this be the connection to the moondial? Retracing her steps, Holly leafed backwards through the book, checking through the text again to see if there were any other references, but her efforts went unrewarded.

Never one to accept defeat easily, Holly knew she had reached a dead end. She closed the book with such force that the contents of the entire table rattled and then she stood up quickly and her chair scraped against the tiled floor.

‘Shush!’ hissed the man at the next reading table. It was the same man who had coughed at her earlier. Holly glowered at him.

‘Shush yourself,’ hissed Holly as she stomped past his desk. ‘I’d have been better off at home searching on Google, at least the company would have been better.’

Holly stopped in her tracks as her words echoed across the room and then she did an about turn. Ignoring the snooty glare from her fellow reader, she returned to her desk and reopened the book, found the reference to the name of the Aztec goddess and scribbled it down. Googling for information wasn’t such a bad idea.

It was only in the bright May sunshine that Holly started to relax again and her thoughts returned to the day’s successes. She had plenty of work to keep her out of trouble and she was keen to return to the village. As Holly entered the train station, she spotted a gift-shop window crammed with teddy bears and she was reminded of Sam’s cutting remarks about her lack of maternal feelings. Sam had inadvertently given her the push she needed and, without a moment’s hesitation, she strode into the shop and bought her unborn daughter the brightest, pinkest teddy bear she could find.

Holly hadn’t eaten since breakfast and her stomach was rumbling by the time she returned to Fincross late that afternoon. It made the decision to take a detour and pay a visit to Jocelyn’s teashop an easy one. She would be fulfilling her promise to the old lady and, besides, she wanted to celebrate her day’s achievements and she couldn’t do that on her own.

The teashop was picture-postcard perfect with gingham curtains, lace tablecloths and the smell of freshly baked pastries and brewing tea and coffee to entice customers. It was busier than Holly had expected, but she managed to grab a table just as a young couple were leaving.

‘What a lovely surprise!’ gushed Jocelyn, scurrying from behind the counter to give Holly a bear hug. ‘Are you hungry? What can I get you?’

‘I’m starving,’ Holly confessed. ‘What do you recommend?’

‘Oh, you’ll have to have a cream tea. I’ve just taken a fresh batch of scones out of the oven so they’re lovely and warm. Or, if you’re really hungry, you could try an open sandwich, there’s plenty to choose from. Or you could have both? You look like you could do with some pampering,’ she said, looking purposely at Holly’s bruised cheek.

Holly self-consciously put her hand to her face. ‘Minor accident,’ she explained dismissively before convincing Jocelyn that a cream tea would be more than enough. When it arrived it was clear that she had been treated to extra helpings. Jocelyn took the seat opposite her.

‘I’ll just rest my legs for five minutes. Lisa can cope on her own for a while.’

‘It’s a lovely teashop. You’ve done well here.’

‘It wasn’t all down to me. My sister Beatrice ran the shop originally. When I left Harry, she was good enough to give me a job, not to mention the flat upstairs. Eventually we became partners and when she died six years ago, God rest her soul, her daughter Lisa took over her share. I love this place, it gave me my life back and I want to carry on working here till my dying day.’

‘Is your son involved in the family business?’

‘Paul? Oh no,’ laughed Jocelyn, the thought obviously tickling her. ‘He’s in the army. I don’t think he’d quite suit a pinny.’

‘You must be very proud of him.’

‘Oh, I am, I am. He’s done so well for himself and things could have been so different.’ Jocelyn’s eyes seemed to dim, as if a shadow from the past had been cast over her.

‘Different in what way?’

Jocelyn waved a hand dismissively as if wafting the shadow away. ‘Oh, nothing. He didn’t have it easy, that’s all. His father was a fervent disciplinarian. Taking Paul away from his influence was the best thing I could have done for him.’

‘I’m sorry you didn’t have a better life in our house.’

‘Well, don’t you worry about me, it was a long time ago. Your lives will be happier there, I’m sure of it.’

‘Do you think so?’ Holly asked, still unsettled by her vision of the future.

‘I know so,’ confirmed Jocelyn, with a smile that made Holly feel safe and her future secure. ‘So how’s Billy getting on with your studio?’

‘You need to ask? I thought he’d be keeping the whole village informed of his progress.’

‘He can be a terrible gossip,’ agreed Jocelyn, ‘but he knows better than to do it around me. I’d give him a clip around the ear if I caught him. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not so much the gossip I object to, he just never gets it right, mainly because he’s always too busy talking to actually listen.’

Jocelyn and Holly shared a few more jokes at Billy’s expense before Jocelyn had to return to work for the teatime rush. Holly attempted to pay for her tea but Jocelyn stubbornly refused, and she was not a woman to be argued with.

‘Thank you, Jocelyn, you’ve been a real tonic. You’ll have to let me return the favour and come over to mine one day.’

‘Well, don’t feel you have to. I don’t want to take up your time now that you’ve got your sculpture to make,’ offered Jocelyn, even though her eyes were pleading with Holly not to withdraw the offer.

‘I insist.’

Jocelyn smiled gleefully. ‘I get every other weekend off and I’ve not got anything planned, so how about a week on Sunday for brunch?’

‘It’s a date,’ agreed Holly. ‘At last I’ve got something to look forward to other than Tom coming home.’

It didn’t take long for Holly’s curiosity to get the better of her. The very next morning her sketchbook and pencils had been carefully laid out on the kitchen table but Holly was nowhere to be seen. She had taken her steaming mug of coffee into Tom’s study and was waiting impatiently for his computer to whir into life. She wasn’t exactly a technophobe, but she didn’t particularly see the attraction of the virtual world that the Internet offered. She preferred to interact with a world she could experience with all her senses, but still, needs must, and she hoped the World Wide Web would succeed where the library had failed.

She carefully typed the name of the moon goddess into the search engine and was immediately presented with pages of hyperlinks, some of which provided immediate dead ends, others only tiny snippets of information. It was only when she added Charles Hardmonton’s name to the search that she hit pay dirt. She found a research site which not only gave more detail about Lord Hardmonton’s last expedition, but it also disclosed information about his fall from grace, information that would have been seen as libellous in its day and wouldn’t be found in any textbook.

Lord Hardmonton’s last recorded expedition had indeed been in search of the temple of Coyolxauhqui in Central Mexico. He had been a principled explorer and these principles had led to a major dispute with his fellow adventurers and more importantly his sponsors back in England. When they found the temple to the moon goddess, Lord Hardmonton had wanted to preserve it in situ, but he was under pressure from his sponsors to strip the temple of its contents and dispatch them to England. Under the threat of legal action for breach of contract, Lord Hardmonton had reluctantly taken part in what amounted to the ransacking of the site.

Holly couldn’t help admiring this nineteenth-century explorer, but his adventures still provided no link to the moondial. She sighed as she scrolled down the page. Further dispute had arisen when Lord Hardmonton arrived back in England. There had been an extensive inventory taken of their hoard, but at some point one of the relics had disappeared in transit. Despite his noble reputation, the finger of suspicion pointed towards Charles Hardmonton. The missing item was never recovered and he was never able to raise the necessary support to finance any further expeditions. He became a recluse and lived out the rest of his life in Hardmonton Hall.

Having drawn a blank, Holly sipped her coffee and stared at the screen. The link between a missing relic from the temple and the moondial was a tenuous one, but Holly wasn’t ready to give up just yet. She tried another combination of words, this time adding ‘inventory’ to the search. To Holly’s amazement, one of the first links led to an actual photocopy of the original inventory. The missing item had been highlighted and recorded as the Moon Stone and there were footnotes describing the treasure in greater detail. It was a large ceremonial stone, made from an unspecified grey quartz. The stone was the centrepiece of the temple and was rumoured to be the fabled Moon Stone, used to worship the moon goddess, Coyolxauhqui. The reference also suggested that, rather than being used for sacrifices, this stone was used to invoke visions.

In her haste to reach over and switch off the computer Holly slopped her coffee over the keyboard. She didn’t want to read any more. She looked at the mess she’d made with her spilt coffee, which was now dripping off the keyboard and trickling towards some of Tom’s papers. With a good excuse to bring her research to an end, Holly jumped up and raced to the kitchen for a cloth. She grabbed a dishcloth from the kitchen sink, but before she turned back towards the study, she glanced out of the window and her body froze. She was staring at the moondial.

She had so far refused to allow her mind to confront directly the idea that the dial had played any role whatsoever in the vision she had seen other than simply being the very hard surface she had hit her head on. Now, she hadn’t only found a link to the moondial’s past life, she had, if her mind allowed it, found a link to the vision of the future she had foreseen.

The spilt coffee was left to dry of its own accord as Holly did her best to convince herself that she was simply jumping to conclusions; irrational conclusions, at that. Her vision of the future was nothing other than a hallucination, she just had to keep telling herself that.

May seemed to be flying by as Holly settled into a peaceful but industrious routine. Billy had completed her studio in record time so she spent her mornings in there working on the scaled version of Mrs Bronson’s sculpture. Her afternoons were set aside for chores and evenings divided equally between sketching new art pieces to satisfy Sam’s demands and telephone calls with Tom, not to mention the occasional foray into the village.

Brunch with Jocelyn was a great success and Holly discovered more and more about the history of the village, although the subject of Jocelyn’s time in the house was expertly sidestepped. The rest of the village seemed equally unwilling to discuss Jocelyn’s past, so Holly’s curiosity remained unsatisfied despite her best efforts.

Holly, too, did some sidestepping and kept any conversation with Jocelyn well away from the moondial. Since learning about the Moon Stone, she had become even more resolute in her belief that her vision had just been a hallucination. Her conviction grew as surely as the bruise on her cheek faded.

Stripping away every last remnant of the nightmare that had haunted her, Holly erased the image of Tom’s lifeless eyes that looked right through her, deleted the vision of the gatehouse with a conservatory pinned to its back and wiped away the chaos of a house which gave home to a newborn but no new mother. The only image that Holly held sacred was that of the baby and, as she pictured Libby’s angelic face, her fingers tingled as she recalled the softness of her cheek.

It was no surprise that the thought of motherhood consumed Holly’s thoughts, not least because she was now working intently on Mrs Bronson’s sculpture. At night, as she closed her eyes, she thought of Libby and relived that moment when their two hearts connected. Slowly she was beginning to share Tom’s enthusiasm for parenthood and she sensed the desire to be a mother growing inside her, a fragile ember that needed nurturing and, when the vision of the baby wasn’t enough to keep the spark alive, she used the anger against her mother to fuel her desire to change.

‘I’ve been thinking about the future,’ Holly told Tom one night as she snuggled beneath the covers in bed. She had the pink teddy propped on her knee in front of her and she felt a flutter of excitement as she imagined the bear’s pink ears being tugged by tiny baby fingers.

‘So what are you having for breakfast, then?’ Tom teased.

‘I was thinking a little bit further ahead than that. How about the next five years?’ Holly held her breath, waiting for Tom’s excitement to erupt.

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘Well, I was expecting a bit more enthusiasm than that,’ Holly replied, feeling a little bit deflated. ‘I’m about to tell you I’m ready to start planning for a baby and that’s the response I get?’

There was a pause and an irrational fear gripped at Holly’s chest.

‘You’ve found someone else,’ she gasped.

‘Don’t be daft. Of course I haven’t!’ Tom told her, shock rising in his voice. ‘Don’t ever think that. Look, I’m sorry, I know it’s a big step for you and I love that you want to be a mum, I love that you’re ready to start a family, I love that you want to have a house full of kids, I love you!’

‘Back up a minute,’ interrupted Holly. ‘Let’s just plan one baby at a time, shall we?’

‘I know, I know. It’s a five-year plan, blah, blah, blah.’

‘So what’s the problem? Why aren’t you going wild with excitement?’ Holly asked, pouting her lip like a petulant child even though Tom couldn’t see her.

‘The studio has called me in for an interview as soon as I’m back in London.’

‘Why?’ Holly didn’t like the tone of his voice. She knew he was still worried about his job, but he was already doing everything they asked of him; surely there was nothing more he could give?

‘The reorganization hasn’t been able to stop the rot. There’s going to be a merger and more changes.’

‘But they can’t do that, they’ve already messed you around. Your job’s as flexible as it could be, they can’t change it any more! Can they?’ Holly felt tears stinging her eyes. She had been looking forward to this moment, telling Tom that she was ready to be a mother. It hadn’t gone according to plan and the euphoric moment Holly had imagined fizzled and died.

She had planned on keeping her decision to herself until Tom returned home in two weeks, but then she had looked up at the full moon that night and the urge to go back into the garden and put the glass orb once more into the claws of the moondial had unnerved her. She needed to lay claim to the future the moondial was trying to take from her.

‘The merger will mean major changes, cutting deeper than anyone expected,’ Tom said.

‘You’re losing your job?’ Holly asked, panic rising in her voice. Her income from her artwork wasn’t enough to support the two of them, let alone a baby.

‘I really don’t know. I’m sorry, Hol, I think it’s great that you want to start planning for a family, better than great, absolutely monumental. I know how much it must have taken you to get to this point and I feel awful about it.’

‘Hey, don’t feel awful. It’s not your fault and, who knows, it might be good news from the studio.’ Holly was usually the more pessimistic of the two, but somehow she sensed there was a need for a little role reversal. Tom was sounding decidedly anxious. ‘Maybe they are in dire straits but they’ve just realized that it’s going to take someone as incredible as you to get things back on track. I can understand that.’

‘I get the feeling that it’ll go one of two ways. Either I’ll have no job at all, or they’ll use the threat as leverage to get me to do some kind of nightmare job. But, hey, we don’t know yet, and even if it is bad, I don’t have to accept it. I could always take a chance and go freelance if the worst happens.’

‘Suppose,’ Holly said glumly. Optimism didn’t become her and she was struggling to fight against the sense of impending doom. ‘Not exactly the secure future we imagined, then?’

‘Hol, we won’t know anything for sure for a couple of weeks yet. Let’s worry about it when it happens.’

‘You’re right,’ she said in a monotone voice that did little to hide her disappointment. ‘Perhaps during your interview you can ask the studio to fill out our five-year plan for us.’

Holly knew it wasn’t Tom’s fault, yet she couldn’t help but feel as though he’d just thrown icy cold water over her fragile plans for motherhood. She suddenly felt so alone with Tom at the end of the phone and the distance between them stretching out further than ever before. Her only company was the pink teddy bear sitting on her knee staring back at her. She played with the label sticking out of the side of its head and it was only then that she noticed the warning written on it. The toy was not for children under two years of age. Perhaps this was a sign that she really wasn’t fit to be a mother after all. She couldn’t even buy a simple teddy for her baby.

‘We’ll know in a couple of weeks,’ repeated Tom.

Holly bit down hard on her lip. She didn’t dare reply in case her words came out as a sob.

‘We’ll have babies one day, I promise,’ Tom added.

‘Will you stay on the phone with me until I go to sleep?’ Holly asked.

‘I’ll stay with you forever.’