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Chapter 4

‘Now you look like someone who needs cheering up,’ Jocelyn told Holly. She had just arrived for their now usual Sunday brunch and could tell straight away that there was something on Holly’s mind.

‘I’m fine,’ Holly reassured Jocelyn with a weak smile. They were sitting at the kitchen table and Holly lifted a teacup to her mouth to hide her trembling and slightly bruised lips. Since Tom’s call, Holly had been nervously biting them to hold back the tears she refused to shed.

‘You’re not the least bit fine. These eyes may be old but they’re not blind,’ admonished Jocelyn. She picked up her shopping bag and took out a small cake box. ‘Still, there’s nothing that can’t be put right with a cupcake. Now what do you fancy, lemon or walnut?’

‘Tom might be losing his job,’ gulped Holly.

‘Oh, Holly, I’m sorry.’ Jocelyn put down the box and stood up, although the grimace on her face made it clear the manoeuvre was a huge struggle for the old lady. ‘Damn these aching joints,’ she muttered as she shuffled around the table to give Holly a hug.

‘Are you all right?’ Holly asked. It was now her turn to look concerned. She was so used to seeing Jocelyn as a strong warhorse that she found it easy to forget that she was an octogenarian.

‘Nothing a new pair of hips wouldn’t fix,’ smiled Jocelyn. ‘I remember the days I used to walk back and forth from here to the village two or three times a day. Now just walking from one end of the room wears me out.’

‘You should have said. I’ve got the car outside. I could have picked you up.’

‘I wasn’t born old and I refuse to give in to it. The day I stop getting from A to B under my own steam is the day I reach my final destination.’

‘Well, you sit right back down and I’ll get some plates for those cakes.’

Jocelyn sank back into her chair with a relieved sigh. ‘So when will you find out about Tom?’

‘He’s back a week on Thursday and then he’s being hauled in to see the studio. He doesn’t know what they’re planning, but he’s not expecting it to be good news. Even if he does keep his job they’ll be piling more work on him.’ It was Holly’s turn to sink back into her chair with a deep sigh, only this sigh had the telltale signs of disappointment.

‘He sounds like a resourceful kind of fellow and from what I’ve seen of him on TV he’s gorgeous. I should imagine he could walk into any job he wanted. I’d give him a job,’ Jocelyn admitted with a wink.

‘Yes, I can imagine!’ laughed Holly. ‘And however comfortable he looks in front of the camera, he actually hates it. He’d rather do the legwork and let someone else take the credit on screen. But it’s not just the job security that worries me,’ confessed Holly.

‘Want to talk about it?’ Jocelyn asked.

‘We were about to start planning for a family. You have no idea how difficult it’s been for me to even contemplate becoming a mother and now, when I think I’m ready, everything is going wrong. I’m starting to wonder if it was meant to be.’ For someone Holly had known for less than two months, she was surprised at how easily she could talk to Jocelyn. There had been very few people in Holly’s life that she would have felt able to have this conversation with, and Jocelyn seemed to be filling a gap that had existed since childhood.

‘There’s still plenty of time. You’ll be a mum one day and you’ll be a good mum, I can feel it in my bones and, believe me, they speak to me a lot.’

‘Did you not think of having more children?’ asked Holly innocently. She was still struggling to find out more about Jocelyn’s former life.

Jocelyn looked thoughtfully at Holly. ‘I married late, had a baby late. I was forty-one when I had Paul, but even if I had been younger, I don’t think another baby would have been a good idea. I wasn’t blessed with a husband like Tom. Harry was a bully and things just got worse when I had Paul. I think he was actually jealous of the affection I showed Paul, so his behaviour became even worse after the baby was born.’

‘I don’t suppose you saw motherhood as a blessing in your life then?’ Holly asked.

‘Oh, the complete opposite,’ replied Jocelyn, shaking her head. ‘Paul was the best thing that ever happened to me. Harry was an expert in mental torture. He isolated me from my friends and family and slowly but surely wore me down. If it hadn’t been for Paul, it could have been so much worse.’

‘What do you mean?’

Jocelyn was looking over Holly’s shoulder towards the window and the garden beyond. There was a look of fear on her face as if her husband’s ghost would appear at the window. ‘Paul saved my life. By that, I mean it was because of Paul that I finally left Harry.

I couldn’t build up the courage to leave for my own protection, but I could for my son, although it took some hard lessons before I realized that.’ Jocelyn’s voice had withered to a whisper and the age-worn wrinkles around her eyes seemed to cut deeper into her face. Her whole body shuddered, despite the warmth of the morning sun streaming through the window.

‘Are you all right?’ Holly asked.

‘I’m fine. I think someone just walked over my grave.’ Again, there was that furtive glance towards the window. ‘I’m sorry, Holly, it’s so hard to go back to that part of my life.’

‘No, it’s me who should apologize. I don’t think I quite realized how awful a time you had here. I’m so sorry,’ said Holly.

‘Don’t be sorry, be hopeful. Don’t give up on your dreams yet, Holly.’

For a split second, Holly didn’t think about her dreams but her nightmares. ‘Perhaps I should be careful what I wish for,’ she said to Jocelyn. ‘Now, enough serious talk; these cakes aren’t going to eat themselves.’

* * *

‘Belgian chocolates? You go to Belgium for six weeks and the best you can come up with is Belgian chocolates?’ growled Holly sleepily. She had been woken abruptly by Tom jumping onto the bed like an excited puppy and announcing that he was home. It was two-thirty in the morning.

‘But look at the wrapping!’ Tom replied loudly to make sure Holly was fully awake.

Holly blinked her eyes, still trying to adjust to the painfully bright bedroom light that Tom had just switched on. Her heart was thudding in her chest, partly from the shock of the early morning wake-up and partly from the joy of Tom’s return. She looked at the large red chocolate box. ‘It’s not even wrapped,’ she complained.

Tom undid the top buttons on his shirt and slipped the box inside. ‘How about now?’ He was kneeling with his legs on each side of Holly, pinning her down. He leant over and kissed the tip of her nose.

‘You smell,’ she teased. ‘It would be like peeling a clove of garlic.’

‘Peel away, Mrs Corrigan.’

She kissed him, softly at first and then with a hunger that came from deep within. In her mind, she chased away the shadows of the past and more importantly the shadows of the future. Everything she needed was in the present. All she needed was Tom.

The box of chocolates disappeared beneath a sea of bed linen and eagerly discarded clothing. ‘I missed you,’ she whispered as she lay in his arms. She curled her fingers through his unruly hair and pulled his head back to look into his eyes. They were the same eyes she had looked into during her moonlit nightmare, only now they glinted green and held no hint of the grief that had consumed the man her warped mind had created. Try as she might, Holly couldn’t shake the picture she had now created of Tom in her mind. The fear for the future that Holly had tried to ignore sparked into life and doubt crept in. What if the moondial had summoned the vision? What if it really had shown her the future?

Tom frowned as he recognized the look of sadness in Holly’s eyes. ‘You must hate me for doing this to you,’ he told her. ‘Uprooting you to the country and then abandoning you. I’m a lousy husband.’

‘You’re the best husband I could ever have. I’m blessed to be loved so much, never forget that.’ Holly wrapped Tom tightly in her arms and squeezed away the tears and the doubts. Fully awake and thinking only of the present, Holly’s mind did a double take and she pushed Tom away from her again so that they were face to face. ‘Hold on, why are you here? You were supposed to be staying over in London tonight, ready for the showdown with the studio tomorrow. What’s happened?’

Tom sighed and closed his eyes. He leaned forward and rested his head on Holly’s as if the weight of the world was bearing down on him.

‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ Holly said, her heart hammering.

Tom lifted his head and tried to smile. Holly knew he wasn’t about to put her mind at ease. ‘I’ve still got a job, or at least I will have,’ he said, but Holly sensed that he was softening the blow.

‘Tell me,’ she demanded softly.

‘Peter Richards is retiring at the end of the year and they want me to be part of the new line-up.’

‘A news anchor? They want you to be an anchorman?’ Holly was almost laughing, partly with relief and partly at the thought of Tom behind a desk in a slick, smart suit reading the news. ‘And that’s bad?’

Tom grimaced. ‘Well, can you picture me in a shiny suit every day? Ah, I see by the wicked smile on your face that you’re already imagining it. But no, that’s not the bad news, not really.’

Holly stopped smiling as she realized there was something else that Tom was trying to tell her. ‘So that’s at the end of the year. What do they have planned for you in the meantime?’

‘The merger has meant joining forces with a couple of other production companies and I’m being seconded. It means more special assignments and they’re going to involve quite a bit of travel. The first assignment is investigating the Canadian oil sands and I have to leave in a couple of weeks. Environmental impact of oil extraction, that kind of thing.’

‘You’re going to Canada?’ Holly knew it was a stupid question and Tom had the good grace to bite his tongue rather than make a smart response.

‘So how long?’ Holly continued.

‘At least a month.’

‘And after that?’ Holly could feel her heart wrenching in her chest.

‘More travelling. I’m sorry, Holly.’

Tom’s eyes were glistening and Holly’s heart pulled some more. She didn’t want to see Tom hurting, not again. She leaned over to kiss Tom on each of his eyes. ‘Kiss me,’ she told him sternly.

‘Even when I smell of garlic?’ Tom asked with a weak smile.

‘It just makes me hungry.’

‘So eat me.’ The smile on his face had now reached his eyes.

Holly giggled and the sound of laughter eased her disappointment. They had each other, they would always have each other, she told herself. She savoured every kiss and every caress and when they made love Holly held onto Tom like she was never going to let go.

Later that morning, when they had worn themselves out and had nothing to sustain their appetites other than a box of very squashed chocolates, Tom and Holly dragged themselves out of bed and down to the kitchen to raid the fridge.

‘So when do I get to see your fabulous new studio?’ Tom asked.

‘As soon as you’re dressed and decent. This is a respectable village and I can’t have you going out in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and risk frightening the locals.’

‘We’re not overlooked,’ replied Tom, ‘and anyway, if your friend Jocelyn comes calling it would probably make her day.’

‘Jocelyn won’t be calling, not today. Everyone knows to keep away for a day or two. Even Billy.’

‘Ah yes, Billy. I wouldn’t mind speaking to him.’

‘So he can finish your half-hearted attempt to landscape the garden, by any chance?’

‘My new job is going to mean more money. If I can’t be here to do the work myself, the least I can do is spend my hard-earned cash on making a beautiful garden for my wife. And I might just be able to afford another project I’ve had in mind,’ Tom answered cryptically.

Holly recalled standing beneath the full moon, standing on the well-manicured garden and looking towards the house. ‘What kind of project?’ she asked as the now familiar sense of fear crawled up her spine. She held the vision of the conservatory in her mind’s eye and willed Tom not to make the suggestion.

‘That’s going to be between me and Billy.’

Holly shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t want to hear something that might give more substance to her hallucination. ‘Suit yourself, then,’ she told Tom.

Tom looked at Holly open-mouthed, shocked and a little disappointed by her quick submission. He wasn’t used to winning so easily. ‘I will, then,’ he said, his bottom lip turned out in boyish petulance.

Feeling guilty at bringing Tom’s little game of words to a sudden end, Holly set about distracting him. ‘Well, if you want to size up Billy’s expertise, let’s go take a look at the studio. I’ll even let you visit half-naked. Let’s live dangerously.’

The weather was warm and there was a damp, earthy smell in the air. June was blooming and in the garden the spring daffodils had made way for the summer blooms. ‘The dandelions are doing well,’ Holly commented as they slipped out of the house barefooted towards the studio. She was only wearing a vest top and knickers and hid as best she could behind Tom.

‘Ooh, ouch, so are the nettles,’ he said as he led the way carefully along a narrow and overgrown path that marked the boundary between the house and the studio.

The entrance to the studio faced the road and was the only place where they risked being seen. ‘Morning, Mrs Davis!’ Tom shouted casually.

Holly gasped and crouched further behind Tom. Then she peeped over his shoulder before thumping him. ‘You don’t know a Mrs Davis,’ she said. ‘Now open the door before someone really does see us.’

Nowadays Holly spent most mornings in her studio and the bright airy space was a second home to her. Tom, on the other hand, had last seen the studio when it was still a building site. She looked at his face intently to savour the reaction. His eyes were wide in amazement as he took in the white walls and the sunlight that danced brightly across the walls and floor. Against the starkness of the white, Holly had hung a mixture of her own artwork and an eclectic selection of photos and other images to inspire her. Some pictures had been pinned to the walls and others hung on wires from the ceiling, creating small clusters of colour scattered around the outer edges of the room.

Tom walked around the studio as if stepping through an enchanted forest. ‘It’s amazing,’ he said at last. ‘I never imagined it would be like this.’ He touched a picture frame which seemed to be floating in mid air. It was a photograph of Tom and Holly laughing. A neighbouring photo was one of them on their wedding day, another was of Grandma Edith. ‘She would be so proud of you,’ he told her.

Tom’s attention was next drawn to Holly’s ongoing projects. Workbenches lined one full side of the room and a few pieces of work in progress were stacked up waiting for completion. The main work area, taking full advantage of the sky lights, was the centre of the studio and here a dust sheet hung over the sculpture Holly was working on. There was an easel next to it with some of Holly’s sketches taped to it.

‘So this must be the sculpture for the dreaded Mrs Bronson,’ Tom noted.

‘It’s a scaled-down version and I’m still not one hundred per cent happy with it. I’ve got another month to get her to sign off the final design and then up until Christmas to complete it. And then I’ll finally be free of her.’

‘Can I take a look?’ Tom asked. He knew very well that Holly hated him looking over her shoulder while she worked and often refused to show him any of her works in progress, not until she was sure in her own mind what the finished article would look like. She didn’t want to risk being swayed by other people’s opinions, as she always seemed to lose her way if she did. Holly decided to take a chance and pulled off the dust sheet to reveal the sculpture. It was about three feet high and was standing on a wooden box to raise it up to eye-level to work on it more easily.

The bottom section was made from plaster of Paris but painted black to represent the marble which would be part of the final piece. Above the swirling, black figures that formed the base emerged the white figure of the mother, or at least that was what the current mess of twisted chicken wire would eventually become. Holly had made better progress with the figure of the baby held in its mother’s arms. The baby’s face was smooth and white, the Cupid’s bow lips perfectly formed and its plump cheeks perfectly round. Holly had drawn inspiration not from Mrs Bronson’s photographs of her son, which were discarded somewhere on her workbench, but from the baby she had seen in her vision.

Tom traced its tiny face with a gentle stroke of his finger. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said.

Holly smiled but the treacherous wings of guilt fluttered across her heart. She felt awkward as she watched Tom look in wonderment at the beautiful contours of the baby, not least because her own mind had already created a vision of him holding and feeding the very same child.

‘I can’t wait to have a baby of our own,’ Tom said, as if reading her mind. He looked at Holly and saw the shadow of doubt in her eyes. ‘Now that I know what’s happening at the studio, we can start on that five-year plan of yours.’

Holly didn’t want to have this conversation right now. Her resolve to have a baby and prove her vision wrong, to prove Sam wrong, had withered and died when Tom had cast doubt about his job and their future. She stood in front of Tom speechless, unsure what to say.

‘You’ve changed your mind, haven’t you?’ he said, almost as an accusation.

‘I don’t know. Everything is so unsettled at the moment, maybe we should put off making plans for now.’

Tom’s body tensed and there was anger in his voice. ‘For God’s sake, Holly, when is the time ever going to be right?’

Holly wasn’t surprised at Tom’s frustration, but the anger shocked her. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, knowing Tom well enough to know that his reaction was about more than Holly’s usual prevarication over having children.

Tom sighed and the anger left his body with a low hiss like a deflated balloon. ‘I’m taking the anchorman job because it means I can give you and any children we may have a stable, secure life. If I had the guts, I’d tell them to stuff their job and go freelance, but I haven’t because I want what’s best for us – us as a family.’

‘Well, why don’t you go freelance? I’m sure you’d find enough work, we’d manage. My work at the gallery is selling well. Tom, we could do it if you really hate the thought of being a news anchor so much.’

‘It’s a good job and I can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And if it means I can be at home more when we do have a family then I really do want to do it. I just want you to want it too. Yes, it’s going to be unsettled for a year, but after that, we’ll know what’s going to happen and we can plan.’

Holly laughed but it was tinged with suppressed hysteria. ‘Do we? Do we really know what’s going to happen? What if we can’t have everything we want, Tom? What if everything comes at a price?’ Holly was conscious that she was teetering on the edge of a precipice and, with a little more nudging from Tom, she was ready to tell him about her vision.

Tom lifted his hands in despair. ‘I love you, Holly. I love you with every beat of my heart, with every breath that I take and with every bone in my body. I couldn’t love you any more and I will never, never love you any less. But you drive me mad sometimes. You drive me mad because I can’t seem to convince you that you’re not going to repeat your mother’s mistakes. What could be so frightening about creating a baby? Look at the sculpture you’re working on. If that’s what you can make from a load of chicken wire and paste, imagine what you can make from love. What do we have to lose?’

Holly knew exactly what she could lose, but she really did need to hold onto reality. The Tom standing in front of her was real and the baby they could make together would be real too. ‘She is beautiful, isn’t she?’ Holly told him. She looked intently at the sculpted image of the baby and the orange embers of maternal feelings that she had all but extinguished burst into flames. ‘I think I’m ready to put that five-year plan down in writing. Five years for me, you and whoever comes along.’

Tom stepped towards Holly and leaned down to kiss her forehead, then her nose. Hovering over her lips, he waited for her to come to him.

‘Don’t tell me, more practice?’ she asked in a whisper. She needed Tom to hold her more than ever and she leaned up to kiss him. They tumbled onto the dust sheet which was lying abandoned on the floor and their gentle caresses transformed into an urgent, passionate rhythm that chased away Holly’s fears for the future and replaced them with hope and anticipation.

Jocelyn was ready to forego her usual Sunday brunch with Holly while Tom was home but Holly insisted. It might have been only days before Tom would be jetting off for Canada, but Holly was looking forward to introducing her to Tom. It felt just like she was introducing a new boyfriend to her parents, not that she had ever experienced that before, or even contemplated it, for that matter.

‘What time will she be here?’ Tom asked nervously as he came out onto the patio, which was bathed in sweet summer sunshine.

Holly was laying out napkins and cutlery on the garden table. ‘Oh, she usually gets here about eleven. It depends how long it takes her to loosen up her joints and get walking.’

‘You should have said, I’ll go get the car and pick her up,’ Tom said, turning on his heels to head back into the house.

Grabbing Tom by the arm, Holly pulled him back. ‘Oh no, you don’t. Jocelyn would be livid if you started treating her like an invalid. She’s a firm believer in mind over matter and she won’t even think about slowing down yet. Believe me, I’ve tried already.’

‘Good grief, I’m going to have another iron lady to deal with. If I’d known, I would have invited Billy over to even out the numbers.’

‘You’ve been meeting up with Billy quite enough as it is,’ Holly accused him.

‘Well, you’ll be seeing a little bit more of him while I’m away,’ Tom replied. He looked ready to slope back into the house, but Holly still had hold of his sleeve.

‘Tell,’ commanded Holly. She ignored the flow of adrenalin surging through her veins. She knew what was coming but she had a new talisman to ward off any doubts about the vision of the future. She and Tom had committed their five-year plan to paper just as she had promised. She had written it down with Tom sitting beside her at the kitchen table, in full view of the full moon and fully aware that the moondial was vying for her attention. The plan recorded that the rest of the current year would be set aside for Tom’s travels, in the following year they would plan for baby number one, by year three Tom was supposed to start writing the book he’d been putting off forever, and then by year five, maybe, just maybe, baby number two. Five years, all planned out, and Holly was there in the future with Tom. It was written down in black and white and nowhere did it mention dying in childbirth. It simply wasn’t in the plan.

‘Well, see this patio table,’ Tom explained as he guided Holly further away from the house so they could visualize his plans. ‘Say, from over there, just before the kitchen door, right across the back of the house in front of the living room and then out, say this much.’ Tom was now pointing excitedly to an imaginary line that reached past the current patio area and across the garden. ‘Imagine, if you will, a beautiful structure of glass and steel, perfectly placed to catch the warmth of the sun with the right amount of shade at the end of the day to take the occasional evening aperitif in our brand-new …’

‘Conservatory,’ Holly said blankly, finishing his sentence. She didn’t need to visualize the conservatory, she had already seen it first-hand.

‘So what do you think?’

Holly wanted to tell Tom to rip up his plans, but she looked at his puppy-dog expression and couldn’t say no. That didn’t mean, however, that the vision she had seen would come to pass and Holly was about to make sure it didn’t. ‘I think that’s a lovely idea, but there is one suggestion I’d like to make before you finish off your designs.’

‘Suggest away, you are the artiste of the family, after all,’ conceded Tom.

‘I don’t know where you were planning on putting the door, but I’d really like French doors coming from the front of the conservatory. Just in case you were thinking of putting them on the side next to the kitchen …’ Holly held her breath. Not only was it where she had seen the doors in her vision, it was also the logical place to put them. But Holly was willing to sacrifice practicalities to prove that the future she had seen had been and always would be restricted to her imagination. If her mind could play games, so could she.

‘But that way, you’d have to walk back around to the patio, which would be in front of the kitchen,’ argued Tom.

‘You’ve just said I’m the creative one. Trust me, it’ll work better. It creates a continuous flow from the living room, through the conservatory and then out to the garden beyond.’

The explanation sounded so good, Holly almost believed it herself and Tom didn’t have a chance to question her because at that precise moment the doorbell rang. Jocelyn had arrived.

‘I can’t imagine another family living here,’ Tom mused. He had used his journalistic skills to extract almost as much information from Jocelyn as Holly had and Tom had known her for less than an hour.

‘I can barely imagine you living here, Tom,’ Holly added pointedly, unable to resist the urge to tease him.

With the sun in his eyes, he squinted at Holly with what was possibly meant to be a hurt look. ‘Distance makes the heart grow fonder.’

‘Well, your travelling seems to be taking you so far around the world you’re practically coming back on yourself. How far do you need to go to prove to your wife that you love her, anyway?’ countered Holly.

‘Oh, all the way,’ smiled Tom, before realizing Jocelyn was sitting quietly watching them. He coughed with embarrassment.

‘Don’t mind me,’ Jocelyn encouraged, ‘it’s been a while since I saw such love in this house.’

‘So what happened to your cruel excuse for a husband anyway?’ Tom asked her. Holly’s jaw dropped. She couldn’t believe how forward he was being, but before she could scold him, to her surprise, Jocelyn replied.

‘He killed himself,’ she answered candidly.

The silence that passed between them left a chill in the air despite the sunshine. ‘I’m sorry, Jocelyn,’ Tom said to fill the space that had opened up an unwanted connection to the past.

Jocelyn looked at Holly and seemed to read her mind. ‘No, it wasn’t in this house,’ she assured them. ‘When I left with Paul, Harry had nothing left to live for. If you want the honest answer, it was always going to be him or me. For Paul’s sake, I’m glad I left, but I carry the guilt with me too.’

‘Guilt? What on earth do you have to feel guilty about? You’ve told me enough to know what a horrible man he was. He made his choices, you made yours. Don’t ever feel guilty,’ Holly told her firmly.

‘You have a good wife there,’ Jocelyn told Tom. ‘Don’t you ever let her go.’

‘I don’t intend to,’ Tom replied.

Holly couldn’t help but think how easily things could change. Life was so precarious and nothing could be taken for granted. She glanced nervously towards the moondial which was now half hidden beneath the new summer’s growth of grass and weeds. Jocelyn followed her gaze.

‘It came from Hardmonton Hall – the moondial, that is,’ she told Holly. ‘There was a massive fire that razed the Hall to the ground in the seventies and the moondial was amongst the few things that survived it.’

‘I read up on that. The family actually died in the fire,’ added Tom.

‘Lord and Lady Hardmonton perished, but their young son was away at the time. He never returned and what little was left of the estate was sold off.’

‘And that’s how you came by the moondial,’ concluded Tom.

‘I can see why you make a living from your enquiring mind,’ laughed Jocelyn. ‘Yes, Harry spotted the dial and just had to buy it, not because he liked it but because he knew I wouldn’t. We’d been married a good while by then. I think Paul would have been about ten and life wasn’t good, wasn’t good at all.’ She turned to Tom before she continued, ready to make a point. ‘Hard as it is to believe, the garden was beautiful back then. It was the one part of my life I still felt I had some control over, a form of escape, but Harry tried his best to spoil that too. He set up the moondial in the middle of my beautiful garden just because he thought it would sully it.’

They all stood up without prompting and walked over to the dial. Tom did his best to stamp down the overgrowth to make it easier for Jocelyn to get to the dial. ‘I will make it good,’ he promised her apologetically. ‘Once I’m done with all of this travelling, it’ll be restored to its former glory, and that’s a promise.’

‘Well, make sure you do,’ Jocelyn answered.

Holly stood in front of the dial but was reluctant to touch it. She had purposely avoided getting close to the dial since her fall, and seeing the stone up close, watching the quartz glinting menacingly in the sunlight, she could almost feel the electric shock she had received from the dial course up her arm.

It was Jocelyn who tentatively reached out and touched the surface of the dial first. ‘You found the mechanism,’ she whispered. Holly thought she detected a slight tremor in her voice.

‘Yes, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. We tried putting the glass ball thing in the claws but it didn’t fit properly,’ explained Tom.

Jocelyn visibly relaxed. ‘It doesn’t work, never has,’ she told Tom. ‘Still, it makes a good bird table.’

‘I’ve never seen a bird land on it yet,’ Holly said, almost to herself, as she realized how strange it was that she hadn’t actually seen a bird anywhere near it.

‘So what else do we know of the moondial?’ Tom asked her, his eyebrow raised in suspicion.

Guilt flushed Holly’s cheeks. ‘What do you mean?’ she stammered.

Tom turned to Jocelyn. ‘My wife here has been doing her own research. I’ve been waiting patiently for her to reveal the murky history of the moondial, but so far she’s keeping her information to herself. She hasn’t even apologized for spilling coffee all over my computer.’

Tom turned back to Holly. Her mouth opened to speak but she couldn’t quite find the words that would help her wriggle out of a conversation that was making her decidedly uncomfortable.

‘You switched the screen off, but you didn’t close down the computer,’ he explained.

‘I was just trying to find out where the moondial came from,’ she confessed. ‘Sorry about the coffee.’

‘What did you find out?’ Jocelyn asked tentatively.

‘There was a Lord Hardmonton in the nineteenth century who was an explorer,’ Holly explained. ‘He discovered something called a Moon Stone in Mexico and it went missing on the return voyage to England. I think maybe he kept the stone for himself and made the moondial from it.’

Jocelyn’s eyes didn’t flicker. If she knew any more about the moondial, Holly thought, she was hiding it well.

‘Not only that,’ added Tom, eager to share his own discoveries, ‘there was a legend that the stone could summon up visions. I found some suggestion that the Aztecs actually believed these were visions of the future, although, if you ask me, it had more to do with the hallucinogenic drugs they would have been taking back then. Still, it’s made me look at the dial in a new light.’

Tom ran his fingers across the etched words on the outer edge of the dial. ‘I read it wrong,’ he told the two women, who both seemed to have turned to stone, with complexions as grey as the moondial. ‘Reflection is the key to travelling in time.’

They all fell silent and the only thing Holly could hear was the hammering of her heart in her chest.

‘All stuff and nonsense,’ sniffed Jocelyn, breaking the spell.

‘I think you might be right there,’ agreed Tom. ‘After all, if it had worked, then why didn’t Lord Hardmonton know that the electrical rewiring he’d just had installed at the Hall would raze it to the ground?’

An electric current of her very own making coursed up Holly’s spine and sent stars glittering across her vision. She was sure she was going to faint so, despite her best intentions, she put her hand on the dial to steady herself. The stone felt cold and Holly felt an almost imperceptible tingling between her palms and the dial. As her vision settled, Holly looked across to Jocelyn, but Jocelyn was looking just as intently at the dial and didn’t meet her gaze.

‘I wonder if this thing could tell me if my wife will burn our supper tonight?’ Tom asked mischievously.

‘Bread and water is all you deserve until you get this garden in order, young man,’ scolded Jocelyn. ‘These nettles are stinging the backs of my legs.’

It was only when their laughter filled the garden that Holly felt the moondial loosen its grip on her.

‘Time for another cup of tea, I think,’ Holly told Tom, who led the two women carefully back to the safety of the patio.

Tom seemed more relaxed as the time approached for him to set off on his travels again. Meeting Jocelyn had obviously eased his guilt and allayed any fears he might have had about leaving Holly alone and isolated in her new surroundings.

‘There’s going to be a major time difference this time around,’ he warned Holly, as he started to cram clothes into his suitcase for the early start the next day. They were in the bedroom and the open window was easing in the summer night’s breeze and the sweet smell of the overgrown honeysuckle that had clawed its way out of the neglected garden and along the back of the house. ‘I think we’re only going to manage to speak once a day.’

‘Without exception,’ Holly warned him. She was leaning over the open suitcase, plucking out the crumpled clothes and then neatly folding them and placing them back in the suitcase.

‘Speaking of phone calls …’ Tom started.

‘Speaking of phone calls, are you finally going to tell me what your long conversation with the studio was about this morning?’

‘I told you, it’s nothing bad. It’s still the same plan. I’ll spend a month in Canada, then come home briefly before setting off again. It’s looking like the next assignment will definitely be in Haiti and I could be away for longer this time, maybe a couple of months.’

‘So I knew that anyway. What’s new?’ Holly asked suspiciously. Tom had already broken the bad news about his next assignment days earlier. Although Holly wasn’t happy about the travelling, or where he was going, for that matter, their future was there, written down in their five-year plan, so all was well in the world and Holly had reluctantly accepted the news.

‘They were saying how happy they were with my front-of-camera work,’ continued Tom a little sheepishly.

‘But?’ Holly demanded.

‘They want to work on my image.’

It was no secret that Tom preferred writing at a desk to presenting behind one and part of that reluctance was the pressure for him to conform to certain standards when it came to image. It was inevitable that the studio would want him to smarten up his appearance at some point.

‘Well, I could see that one coming,’ laughed Holly.

Tom gasped in mock horror. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence! So go on, say it. Tell me I’ve got the perfect face for radio.’

‘You have a perfect face,’ Holly told him. ‘Your hair, on the other hand …’

‘I know,’ Tom said, self-consciously pulling at a wayward curl that was sticking up on top of his head.

Holly suddenly burst into laughter. ‘They want you to cut your hair, don’t they?’

‘It’s not funny,’ Tom said seriously, but then started laughing too. ‘The studio wants me to have my new image sorted before they start filming my pieces over in Canada.’

Pushing the suitcase out of the way, Holly crawled over the bed towards Tom. She wrapped her arms around him and lovingly began to caress his dark locks. ‘Then I think I’m going to have to kiss every last one goodbye,’ she whispered.

As Tom joined her on the bed he barely noticed the fraction of a second when Holly’s whole body froze. She had just remembered the broken-hearted Tom in her vision. His hair had been cropped short. Holly was tiring of the game the moondial seemed to be playing with her mind and, in that split second, she knew she had to put that particular nightmare to bed once and for all.