Читать книгу Book Club Reads: 3-Book Collection: Yesterday’s Sun, The Sea Sisters, Someone to Watch Over Me - Amanda Brooke, Amanda Brooke - Страница 15

Chapter 5

On the day that Tom set off for Canada, Holly couldn’t wait for night to fall. The evening was warm and wet as Holly scrambled through the long grass and stood in defiance in front of the moondial. Above her, the waning moon shone down on her and sought out the reflected surface of the glass orb that Holly clasped in her hand. She didn’t want any more time to think about what she was doing so she dropped the orb hastily into the dial, taking care not to let her fingers make contact with the brass mechanism or the stone dial itself.

The orb rattled into place and then remained as still as the night that closed in expectantly around Holly, feeding on her growing tension. She strained her ears for the telltale ticking of a clock, the sound that had accompanied the violent flash of moonbeams the last time she had used the dial, but the only sound that greeted her was the rustling of the tall grasses as they scraped against each other in the gentle breeze. The orb sparkled innocently as it reflected the moonlight but it held no power of its own, nothing that existed beyond the realms of her own imagination.

In the distance Holly heard the occasional hooting of an owl, and she imagined it was laughing at her. She didn’t blame it. She lifted up her head to the skies to expel a huge sigh of relief, but the smile on her face faltered as she stared at the skies above her. On the night of her vision, there had been a full moon, not the partially hidden face that peaked out behind the shadow of the earth. The images of the moon etched on the surface of the dial were all perfect circles. Reluctantly, she understood in that moment that if the moondial really did hold any power of its own it would be by the light of the full moon. Cautiously, using her finger and thumb, she prised the glass orb from the weak grasp of the dial and returned it to its box.

Holly felt defeated and deflated. There were three whole weeks to wait until the next full moon at the end of July, and Holly felt like her life had been placed in limbo. Dealing with the emotional fallout from this latest separation from Tom was bad enough, but living with the nagging doubts and the growing possibility that she had seen a vision of her future and one where she had already died, was just too much to bear.

That night, Holly tossed and turned in bed, trying to make sense of everything she had seen or thought she had seen during her hallucination and the connections she had made to this vision since then. Perhaps the bang on her head when she had fallen in the garden had caused a long-term problem. Perhaps she hadn’t seen a conservatory in her original vision. Perhaps she hadn’t seen Tom with short hair. What if her mind had just altered her memory of the vision when Tom told her about his plans? Didn’t that make more sense? Holly knew this didn’t explain away the parallels between her own experience and the legend of the Moon Stone, but the link between the moondial and the Moon Stone was still a tenuous one. ‘Reflection is the key,’ that was what the inscription said, but what did it mean? The moon reflected the light of the sun into the darkness of the night. The moondial took that light and reflected it where? Into the future?

Holly wondered if she should speak to Jocelyn about the dial. Had she simply imagined Jocelyn’s uneasiness as they stood around the moondial? Did Jocelyn have more secrets to reveal? She couldn’t share her thoughts until she had unravelled the puzzle a little more and she couldn’t do that until the moon was full. Holly shook her head to free herself from the spider’s web of theories that tangled up her thoughts into a silken mess.

It was no surprise that during each and every night that followed Holly seemed to sleep less and less as the moon shrank into a crooked smile that seemed more of a smirk, before beginning to open its wide yawning mouth, ready to swallow up her fading hope that everything could be explained away by a simple bump on the head.

While the moondial occupied her thoughts during the night, it was Mrs Bronson’s sculpture that occupied her days. The baby figure was faultless, its smooth, soft curves had just enough echoes of Libby to tug at Holly’s heart every time she looked at it, which she often did. The mother figure was nearing completion too, cradling the baby in her arms in a way that made Holly’s own arms ache for the weight of her child. The mother’s arms were wrapped around the tiny figure as if it was the most delicate of flowers, but there was also something about that pose that suggested the mother had a grip of iron.

Holly stepped back to review her work. Her hands were covered in dust from sanding and chipping away at any imperfections to reveal smoother lines and refined curves. It was almost finished, but still Holly frowned. She stepped slowly around the sculpture, surveying every inch of the spiralling form and the transition points where the black stone would meet white. It didn’t have the finesse that would be reserved for the final version, but otherwise everything looked as it was supposed to. Still not satisfied, Holly took a few more steps back until she was practically at the door, checking the work from a distance. There was something about the pose that Holly felt was wrong even though it was precisely as she had drawn it in her initial sketches.

Her eyes drifted towards a chisel but she stopped herself from going and picking it up. Instead she released a deep sigh. ‘It’s good enough for Mrs Bronson,’ she told herself with a touch of annoyance.

It was mid July and, although she had until the end of the month to sign off the sample piece, Mrs Bronson couldn’t wait and had been pestering her for days. Holly knew she had to take a leap of faith and accept that this was the best she could produce. She went to lean against the studio door in resignation. Unfortunately, at that precise moment, the door opened outwards and Holly’s body met nothing but thin air.

‘Watch yourself,’ Billy shouted, catching Holly mid fall.

Hovering no more than a foot from the ground and relying on Billy’s arms to keep her from hitting the floor, Holly looked up into the builder’s eyes as he leaned over her. He gave her a sympathetic smile as he shook his head. ‘You women really can’t be trusted on your own,’ he told her with a sigh.

‘I can look after myself perfectly well,’ said Holly with a growl.

‘Women,’ he replied with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

‘You can let go of me now, Bill,’ Holly suggested.

‘You’re the boss,’ he said, letting go of her.

Holly landed on the floor with a clatter of jarred joints. ‘Thanks, Billy!’ she said, rubbing her elbows as she struggled up. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’

‘Reporting for duty, ma’am.’ Billy saluted her. Holly stared at him vacantly so he continued, ‘Your husband has commissioned me to build you one conservatory.’

‘Hmm,’ frowned Holly. ‘Just what I need.’

‘Ooh, wait until you see it. It’s going to be spectacular,’ gushed Billy.

‘Ooh, I can just imagine it,’ sighed Holly, mirroring Billy’s enthusiasm with an added sprinkle of sarcasm that only she could appreciate.

‘Well, imagining is all you can do. I agreed the plans with Tom but I’m not to show you. You’ve done enough meddling by messing about with the position of the doors. Tom wants the finished product to be a surprise.’

‘That might be more difficult than you think,’ Holly replied.

‘I suppose there’s no chance that you could stay out of the garden for the next couple of weeks?’

‘No chance,’ confirmed Holly. ‘I tell you what,’ she added when she saw Billy’s shoulders sag in disappointment, ‘I’ll avert my eyes whenever I go past and promise not to go snooping.’

‘It’s a deal. We’ll start work after the weekend.’

‘Great, I’ll see you next week,’ replied Holly.

Billy looked over towards the sculpture and was obviously about to give Holly his expert opinion.

‘See you Monday, Billy,’ Holly told him before he had a chance to speak.

‘Could it do with …’ he began.

‘Go away, Billy,’ Holly said a little more forcefully, but with a suppressed laugh tickling the back of her throat.

With Billy out of the way, Holly picked up the phone and called Mrs Bronson. If she could arrange for her client to visit the studio next week then she would be ahead of schedule and able to spend some time working on the other pieces she had promised Sam for the gallery. That was, of course, assuming Mrs Bronson was happy with the scaled version. Holly stared at the sculpture as she made the necessary arrangements with Mrs Bronson over the phone. The frown returned.

She just hoped it was her own self-doubt and insecurities that made her look at the piece differently. The mother-and-child theme was always going to be a challenge, but even Holly couldn’t have suspected how challenging.

Holly sighed, chasing away the ghosts of the future. Hopefully Mrs Bronson would have an uncomplicated view and see the sculpture as Holly had intended: a simple and idealistic portrayal of the bond between mother and child.

Holly’s separation from Tom had grown and not just in terms of distance. The emotional effects were wider than the Atlantic Ocean that now lay between them. She had been prepared for the impracticalities of their long-distance relationship caused by the time zone differences, but what she hadn’t factored in was the chaos Tom had left her to face on her own, thanks to the moondial.

She realized it had been naive to think that she could handle the bizarre situation which she found herself in on her own. She had been cast adrift by her loveless parents, but when Tom came along, he had become her anchor. Her original five-year plan had set the course for her adult life, but it was Tom and only Tom who had given her the stability that she had craved for so long. The next five years were supposed to be plain sailing and, for Tom, having a baby and a wife was fundamental to that plan.

With the full moon only days away, Holly needed him more than ever. She wondered how he would react if she were to tell him about her hallucination and how she was even vaguely willing to accept that she had seen a vision of the future. He would probably book the next flight home. He would be supportive, of course, but he would never understand her fears. He wasn’t the one who had walked into a house where the air was leaden with grief. He hadn’t felt his heart break at the sight of the one he loved falling apart, and he hadn’t see the vision of Libby, with the most perfect, beautiful green eyes staring back at him, and then been unable to hold her, not then and perhaps not ever, if the vision was as portentous as Holly was starting to believe it was. So when Holly picked up the phone and made her usual international call to Tom, she let the sound of his voice ease her fears and gave away no clue to her growing anxieties.

‘So how’s Billy getting on with my project?’ Tom asked eagerly.

It was mid afternoon in Fincross and the sun was high, breaking record temperatures for the year. It would have been a beautiful day for sitting out in the garden if Holly had been allowed outside in what had now become a construction site. The patio, where Holly, Tom and Jocelyn had enjoyed their Sunday brunch, had been ripped up and the foundations had been laid for the conservatory.

‘I’m under strict instructions from Billy not to look out of any of the windows or go into the garden, so how would I know how it’s going?’ complained Holly.

‘But everything’s going to plan?’

‘Billy’s still complaining about the position of the conservatory doors and won’t stop bending my ear. I’ve had to recruit Jocelyn to use her influence over him just to stop him changing the design behind my back.’

‘Well, he has a point. I’m still not convinced it’s the right place for the doors.’

‘I told you, I’m the creative one. I know what’s best,’ Holly assured him.

‘So, speaking of creativity, have you seen the dreaded Mrs Bronson yet?’

‘She’s not long ago left,’ Holly told Tom as she sat at the kitchen table picking at a sandwich.

‘And?’ he demanded.

‘And she loved it, thank God.’ Holly leaned back in her chair and let the sense of relief wash over her. She couldn’t stop grinning.

‘I’m not surprised. It looked amazing even when I saw it only half-finished. Can you send me a photo now, please?’

Holly had refused to show him the completed article until Mrs Bronson was ready to sign it off. She knew Tom would love it but Mrs Bronson was the client and she was the one that needed to be pleased.

‘I will,’ she promised.

‘So she didn’t want any changes, then?’

‘Well, I didn’t get off completely scot-free. She was keen to point out that her dearest child has a longer face and a dimple on his chin. I had half a mind to tell her she should be grateful I’ve based it on a far prettier baby, but the client is always right.’

‘So of course the final sculpture will look more like her son,’ added Tom.

‘Of course,’ Holly said with a wicked grin.

‘Really?’

‘How could you doubt me? If she wants her baby’s ugly features immortalized, why would I do anything else?’

‘Because it’s your work being immortalized maybe?’

‘Now I never thought of it that way. I might need to have a rethink.’

‘Like you haven’t already,’ laughed Tom. ‘Well, I hope you won’t abandon our babies if they’re ugly.’

Holly’s smile faltered and she was just glad that Tom was on the end of the phone and not in front of her.

‘Our babies will be beautiful,’ she said before the pause became too noticeable. She closed her eyes and a familiar face came to mind.

‘They will be if they take after you.’

‘As long as they have your eyes,’ she told him. A vision of Libby looking up at Holly hovered behind her closed lids and she had to squeeze her eyes tightly to chase away the ghost of her image.

‘My eyes, but your nose. And your mouth. And your hair. Beautiful babies who will grow up to be just as gorgeous as their mum,’ Tom went on with absolute certainty. ‘Well, the girls will. I’m not so sure about having sons with long blond hair though, call me old fashioned.’

Holly giggled and the sound chased away the tension that had been building up inside her. This was why she needed Tom in her life, to make everything normal and safe and simple. ‘You’ve got it all planned out, haven’t you? You’ve probably even picked the names,’ Holly accused him.

‘Me? You’re the one with all the plans! Although, now you mention it, I had been toying with some ideas for names,’ admitted Tom.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve picked out a bunch of weird and wacky names now you’re aspiring to celebrity status.’

‘Hmm, don’t remind me. I’ve got an appointment with the stylist soon. I can’t believe what the studio is putting me through. But no, no stupid names. I was kind of toying with the idea of calling one of our boys Jack after Dad.’

‘OK,’ Holly replied sceptically. ‘And I’ll ignore the reference to having hordes of children yet again.’

‘And I’d really, really like it if we named our first girl after Grandma.’

‘Edith?’ Holly grimaced at the very idea.

‘No, I wouldn’t be that cruel. Grandma’s second name was Elizabeth. We could call her Beth or Eliza or even Lizzy for short.’

‘Or Libby,’ added Holly, the tension returning to her body with all the subtlety of a knockout punch in the chest.

‘Hey, that sounds perfect. Our little Libby. I can just imagine her now.’

‘Me too,’ whispered Holly.

As they said their goodbyes and Holly put down the phone, she desperately wished life could be as simple as it used to be. She wanted to believe once more that tomorrow was a blank page ready to be filled and that while it remained blank their love could make up a whole new world ahead of them. With any luck, the full moon was about to prove that the moondial was just a garden ornament and, more importantly, that her future was written only in their five-year plan and not captured within the reflections from the moondial.

‘You look different,’ Holly told him as she stared at the photo Tom had sent to her phone. In the safety of her bedroom, surrounded by a sea of pillows and wrapped in her duvet, Holly had insulated herself from the fear of the full moon which was already creeping across the night sky.

‘Different in a good way or different in a bad way?’ pushed Tom. The tinny echo of his voice seemed more noticeable in the night time and emphasized the distance between them.

‘Just different,’ repeated Holly. The photo wasn’t great quality and Tom had obviously taken it himself, arm outstretched with the bland hotel-room decor as the backdrop.

His face looked thinner and his features sharper without his usual halo of curls. Although Holly could vaguely recall the image of Tom with short cropped hair from her vision, it had been the hollowness in his eyes that she had focused on then. In the safe realms of reality, Holly was clear headed and able to take a more critical view of his new hairstyle.

She hadn’t doubted that Tom would look as handsome as ever with a slick hairdo and suit to match, but seeing him with his cropped hair, she felt an unexpected wrench. She had become accustomed to the dishevelled Tom, that was her Tom and he had gone away in more than one sense. ‘It’ll grow on me,’ she added hesitantly.

‘You don’t like it,’ moaned Tom. ‘And to think you always used to nag me about getting my hair cut.’

‘I have, in the past, suggested you keep it tidy and trimmed. I did, on occasion, drag you to the bathroom to wash it. I accept that once, and only once, I chopped off a couple of knotted tats when you were asleep.’

‘You practically scalped me!’

‘You look dashing. You look suave. The viewers are going to be enthralled.’

‘Now you’re just being nice. Tell me more,’ encouraged Tom.

Holly soothed and reassured Tom, who, like Samson, felt emasculated by the simple act of a haircut. As she tucked in the covers around her, Holly’s gaze occasionally lifted towards the bedroom window. She had all the lights on in the room to neutralize the moonbeams that were trying to invade her peace of mind.

She had been counting the days until the full moon, but now she was tempted to rely solely on her rational thinking to dismiss the idea of its latent power. Did she really need to put it to the test?

Still chatting to Tom, Holly reluctantly peeled herself out of bed and crept towards the window. She pulled back the curtains and tentatively opened the blind. The enigmatic face of the moon beamed at her and Holly let out a sigh of resignation.

‘Are you tired? Do you want me to go?’ asked Tom, interpreting her sigh as a repressed yawn.

‘Not yet,’ answered Holly, and a spasm of fear and anticipation gripped her chest.

But she couldn’t keep Tom talking all night so with the pretence that he was guiding her towards a peaceful sleep, Holly said her final goodnight with the acrid taste of guilt on her tongue.

The walls closed in around her as soon as she put the phone down. The air seemed to have been sucked out of the room and Holly succumbed to the urgent need to flee the house, grabbing a fleece and slipping on her trainers along the way. Retrieving the wooden box from the kitchen, Holly pushed onwards. It was only when her hands touched the cold stone of the dial that she realized that it wasn’t the house she was running from but the dial she had been running to.

* * *

The summer rain during the day had left the July evening damp and humid, and as Holly caught her breath in front of the moondial the sweat was already tickling the back of her neck. She had wrapped the fleece around her waist and hoped that she wouldn’t need it.

A host of fluffy clouds were scattered across the sky, with the biggest hiding the perfectly round face of the moon. Holly dropped the orb cautiously into the brass claws of the dial and squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for a dazzling light show and hoping against hope that it wouldn’t arrive.

After a second or two of anxious waiting, Holly prised an eye open and looked around her. She took in the comforting sight of the long grass standing to attention at her feet. In the distance, the branches of the trees in the orchard were gently weighed down by the burden of their emerging fruits. The breath that Holly had been holding escaped as a relieved sigh.

‘See, Holly, no magic, no voodoo.’ Holly reached out to retrieve the orb just as a gust of wind whipped across the garden and the long grass rustled around her. The cloud that had been hiding the moon’s face was also swept away and moonbeams stretched out greedily towards the dial.

Holly’s fingertip had barely made contact with the orb when it glowed into life and thin lines of light trickled onto the surface of the dial. Her finger trembled and she pulled her hand away as an explosion of moonbeams danced across the garden. She squeezed her eyes shut and held on tightly to the sides of the dial to steady herself just as her grip on reality seemed to slip away and she felt herself being sucked into an abyss.

She could feel the dial almost buzzing with electricity beneath her grip, but she held on for dear life. The sound of a ticking clock thudded against her ears and then slowly receded into the distance.

It wasn’t just the shock from the dial that took Holly’s breath away or the dazzling light show as moonbeams danced around her, it was the sudden plummeting temperature as the warm breath of summer transformed into the harsh gasp of winter.

Slipping into her fleece, Holly felt the sweat on her neck turn to icicles. She desperately tried to blink away the light shadows and look around, but she didn’t need full vision to confirm the changes in her surroundings. Long grass no longer tickled her legs and her feet felt like they had been plunged into buckets of ice. As her vision struggled to clear, she realized why she felt so cold. She was standing in over a foot of snow and the remaining light shadows that plagued her weren’t shadows at all but fluffy snowflakes swirling around her.

Holly was frozen within seconds and couldn’t stay where she was, no matter how much she wanted to. She had no choice but to seek refuge in the house and face whatever horrors awaited her. Across the virgin white blanket of snow, the kitchen window sent out a beacon of light towards her. The only other lights on in the house came from the living room, its warm glow partially hidden by the conservatory. Holly was too intent on reaching the safety of the house and its promised warmth to deal with what was happening or take in the detail of her surroundings. It was only as she reached the partial shelter offered by the side of the house that Holly finally took a moment to collect her thoughts.

There was absolutely no doubt that, whatever Holly was experiencing, it was the same thing that had happened to her before. Holly didn’t want to use the term time travel, but whatever was happening couldn’t be explained away by something as simple as a hallucination. There had been no blow to the head or other physical trauma. She knew where she was, she just wasn’t sure when. It certainly wasn’t a balmy summer’s night.

Her glance shifted to the conservatory and the first thing she noticed was that the French doors that had been to the side of the structure on her last visit were no longer there. From this vantage point she couldn’t see the front of the conservatory, but she didn’t really need to see it. She knew that was where the doors would be; after all, that was where they were on the partially completed structure Billy was still working on. Holly’s mind still fought to find a rational explanation. If this was a vision of her future then she had changed it in some way, but equally, if it was a vision created by her own imagination, then of course the doors would have moved. The position of the doors proved nothing.

Holly took one last look across the lawn to the moondial as she prepared herself to enter the house, challenging the dial to give her some clue as to its powers. The dial refused to face her glare, having retreated beneath a blanket of snow. She was just about to turn away from the dial when something caught her attention and it took a few seconds to work out what it was. The snow lay thick between the house and the dial with a single set of footprints showing the path she had trodden towards the back door. Holly peered into the flurry of snowflakes to take a closer at the footprints, particularly the ones furthest away near the dial. Although the snow was falling heavily, it shouldn’t be enough to cover up her tracks so quickly, yet before her eyes the trail was slowly being erased. The footprints closest to the house were the last to disappear and Holly looked on in dis-belief as the snow filled out the foot-shaped holes with perfect precision. In no time at all, the layer of snow on the lawn looked untouched, as if she had never walked across it.

Turning quickly, Holly pushed down the handle on the back door, but her hand slipped. Remembering the effort she had needed to open the door last time, Holly gripped the handle with renewed urgency. She had to get away from the snow storm which was invading her brain as well as her surroundings.

The kitchen felt warm, safe and was thankfully empty. Holly closed her eyes and leaned against the door. She could feel the snowflakes melting from her hair and dripping down her face. They felt like tears trickling down her cheeks, but Holly knew better than to cry. She needed to steel herself for what lay ahead.

Holly shivered and shook away the tension that was threatening to paralyse her. Opening her eyes, the kitchen was exactly as she had feared, a chaotic mess of dirty dishes and baby equipment. The kitchen table was cluttered and there was a half-opened newspaper teetering on the edge of it. Holly picked the newspaper up and looked for the date. It was January 2012, a full eighteen months into the future. Holly knew she couldn’t keep pushing away the idea that she had travelled in time, but her main objective at the moment was simply to keep functioning and get herself through this nightmare and hopefully out the other side.

She was about to replace the newspaper when she noticed a dark, circular scorch mark on the table. She stroked her finger across the grain of the wood but the mark seemed to be a permanent war wound – one that she had never seen before. Although the sound of the ticking clock that marked her arrival had disappeared, Holly still sensed time ticking by. She needed answers and her only hope of understanding what was happening, or perhaps more correctly, what could happen in the future, was if she kept moving and kept exploring.

Leaving the kitchen, she paused just outside the living room. The door was slightly ajar and although there was very little sound coming from the room, the shadows that danced across the walls belonged to Tom, Holly was sure of it. Her heart was hammering in her chest but she knew she had to enter the room. Whether it was the workings of the moondial or her own mind didn’t matter. She was here for a reason and she had to face her future.

Holly stepped silently over the threshold and stayed as close to the wall as she was physically able. Tom was facing away from her, kneeling down over a changing mat. Libby was lying on the mat with her legs kicking furiously in the air and Tom was struggling to lever her into a pink babygro suit. Holly was thankful she had stayed so close to the wall because when Libby twisted around and smiled directly at her, Holly’s legs turned to jelly and she had to lean against the wall for support.

Following Libby’s gaze, Tom turned to look in her direction, but he only frowned in puzzlement. Holly’s heart fell as once again he didn’t acknowledge her presence at all.

‘What are you looking at, you little monster?’ cooed Tom, tickling Libby’s tummy. Libby gasped and gurgled in delight.

Libby’s smile alone had warmed Holly’s insides and she longed to kneel down next to Tom and join in the fun. She knew in her heart that Libby really was her daughter and she desperately wanted to hold her baby, more than anything. The thought that her desire to hold Libby was greater than her need to free herself from this nightmare actually startled her.

‘Now you stay there while I go get your bottle ready,’ Tom told Libby, who was now all buttoned up.

As Tom stood up and turned, Holly was relieved to see a glimpse of her old Tom, not the haunted man she had seen last time. His hair was still short and neat although his clothes, jeans and T-shirt, were more creased and torn than ever before. It was his eyes that gave Holly most relief; they were green and bright, a little red-rimmed perhaps, but there was no emptiness, no abject despair.

Unable to deal with him completely ignoring her, Holly closed her eyes as he slipped past. With Tom out of the room, Holly launched herself onto the floor next to Libby to take a better look at her. She had grown since the first time Holly had seen her, although her eyes were just as green and her cheeks just as chubby. Holly didn’t know enough about babies to even hazard a guess at how old Libby was. It had been three months since Holly’s last vision and she could easily believe that Libby was three months older, but whether she was four months or nine months old, Holly couldn’t even begin to guess. Out of the corner of her eyes, she noticed a pink teddy. It was the one she had bought during her visit to London to meet Sam and Mrs Bronson.

A frown of concern creased her brow. ‘You shouldn’t be playing with that. I don’t know much, but I know you’re not two years old,’ she told Libby. Libby gasped and wriggled with excitement at the sound of Holly’s voice. Holly stroked her cheek and the baby reached up and grasped Holly’s finger with a smile.

Holly lifted the tiny hand and kissed it softly. ‘Hello, beautiful,’ she told her. Libby started to kick her legs again in excitement and Holly copied Tom, tickling the baby’s soft tummy as Libby fiercely held onto her finger.

Twisting her finger free, Holly slipped her hands beneath Libby. She wasn’t sure how Tom would react to see his daughter being carried in mid-air by an invisible woman, but Holly didn’t care, she desperately needed to hold Libby. Libby’s body, however, seemed to be glued to the floor; struggle as she might, and in a repeat of her previous vision, Holly couldn’t hold her baby in her arms. Tears of frustration stung her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I wish I knew why, but I just can’t hold you,’ she whispered.

The smile on Libby’s face faltered and was replaced by a frown as she looked up at her mother. Holly forced a smile and stuck out her tongue, to which Libby blew a wet raspberry in response, and the baby’s smile returned.

Holly stroked her soft blonde hair, but behind her, she heard Tom returning from the kitchen. ‘I love you, Libby,’ whispered Holly, planting a kiss on her forehead. The words had come out before Holly had time to think about what she was saying, but it felt right. Whether Libby was a figment of her imagination or not, Holly knew she was experiencing pure motherly love for the first time.

When Tom came back she scuttled over to a corner of the room and watched as he picked up Libby. ‘Beddie byes for you, my little pumpkin,’ he said. With a feeding bottle in one hand and Libby balanced over one shoulder, Tom turned to leave. As he headed out of the room, Libby stretched her hand towards Holly, trying to grab hold of her before disappearing from view.

‘Night night, sleep tight, my angel,’ Holly called out in a hushed whisper.

Left on her own, Holly felt lost and scared once more and she wondered what to do next. She looked around the room, which seemed remarkably similar to the room she was used to. There were a few additions that could be accounted for by Libby’s arrival, not to mention new scatter cushions and a rug, which were in exactly the right shade of green that Holly had already been scouring the shops for. There was also a pile of abandoned greetings cards on the shelf next to the smiling China cat that Tom had bought her from Covent Garden on their first official date.

Holly tried and failed to return the cat’s smile as she turned her attention to the pile of greetings cards. Picking up the uppermost card was almost as difficult as picking up Libby and when she finally had it in her grasp, she realized with a shudder that it was a sympathy card and let it drop. A cloud of dust billowed up and wrapped itself around Holly like a shroud.

She quickly stepped away and moved towards the fireplace, running her finger along the top of the mantelpiece as if she was a matron inspecting the cleanliness of a ward. It too was covered in a sheet of dust. Tom obviously had more on his mind than housework; still Holly couldn’t help but think it wasn’t a good thing for Libby to be in such a dusty room. Unable to help herself, Holly pulled at the sleeve of her fleece and used it as best she could to wipe away the dust. She stood back to admire her work only to watch in growing horror as a new layer of dust settled on its surface within moments.

Holly sensed she didn’t belong here, but she was determined not to be frightened off. Perhaps her life depended upon it. There was little else in this room to offer any clues, so Holly decided to extend her exploration to the study. She crept out of the living room and listened out for Tom. He was now upstairs, feeding Libby, and Holly resisted the urge to go up and watch them go through their bedtime routines. Instead, she headed past the stairs and entered the study, which was draped in shadows, lit only by the moonlight seeping through the window. She took a risk and switched on a lamp, surprised this time by how easy it was to flick the switch. Perhaps her presence was growing stronger along with her determination to make sense of everything.

Tom’s desk looked far more used than she had ever seen it. Leafing through the debris of his work, she spotted various research notes and scripts which fitted in with the news anchor position he would now have started, if this really was eighteen months in the future. There were pencilled notes at the edges of some pages in Tom’s familiar scrawl, although the sharpness of the postscripts and the harshness of the comments didn’t feel like Tom’s writing at all. It had a tangible anger to it.

Propped upright on a bookshelf, Holly found what she was looking for. It was a box file and it had one word handwritten on its spine. It simply said, Holly, and in contrast to his notes, Tom had obviously taken his time writing each letter perfectly. Inside the box there were official documents and letters, all relating to Holly’s death, but there was only one document that would point her to her destiny.

Her hands trembled as she held aloft her death certificate. The certificate recorded the cause of her death as an aneurism on 29 September 2011 following childbirth complications. Holly took a deep breath and focused on the sensation of her blood flowing through her veins and her heart beating rapidly in her chest. She was most definitely alive. ‘Can’t believe everything you read,’ she told herself, forcing a smile and ignoring the weight that this knowledge had placed on her shoulders.

Hearing soft footfalls coming down the stairs, Holly quickly put away the papers and switched off the lamp. She entered the hall just as Tom disappeared into the kitchen. He was back out in a matter of seconds with a glass in one hand and a bottle of whisky in the other. Holly followed him into the living room, although it was with some reluctance. There was something about the look on his face that had given her a sense of foreboding.

Tom sat down heavily on the sofa and stared at the bottle in his hand. He looked deflated, less like the man who had left the room with Libby bouncing on his shoulder and more like the ghost of her previous vision. Holly watched from the safety of the doorway, unsettled by the sense of desolation creeping across the room towards her and feeling the need to keep an escape route clear in case she had cause to use it. Tom poured himself a generous measure of whisky and swirled the golden liquor around his glass, staring into its depths.

He suddenly gasped as if suppressing a sob and Holly jumped out of her skin. She hit the door behind her and the half-open door closed slightly. Tom looked straight at her and for a second Holly felt his gaze upon her, but the connection didn’t last. Tom’s face lifted imperceptibly with expectation, only for a tidal wave of grief to sweep away all remnants of hope.

Tom shook his head and turned his attention back to the glass. ‘Hello, Holly,’ he whispered. ‘I know you’re watching me. I know you’re shaking your head at me and telling me to pull myself together. So why don’t you come through that door right now? Why don’t you march in and tell me to tidy up all this mess?’

‘Tidy up this mess, Tom,’ ordered Holly. Although she spoke in hushed tones, Holly willed Tom to hear her.

Tom made not the slightest sign that he had heard her speak, but still he answered her. ‘I can’t. I can’t even wipe away the dust, because I keep imagining your fingerprints there on every surface, on everything you might have touched, and I can’t bear to wipe them away just like you were wiped away out of my life.’

Holly gulped back her pain and she was torn between running towards Tom and running away from him. Instead she did neither. She stood transfixed to the spot as he carried on talking to her ghost.

‘I should have been an actor, I’m so good at making people believe I’m OK. I’m back at work and as long as someone’s there to watch me put on my act, I’ve got the stiff-upper-lip thing down to a tee. But that’s not the real me, Holly. Only you could see through to the real me. Oh, Holly, God, how I love the sound of your name. You wouldn’t believe the lengths people go to just to avoid saying it. They must think I’ll turn into a blubbering wreck if they say your name. Me, blubbering? Now that’s a joke.’

Tom laughed but it sounded hollow. Holly had edged closer to him as he carried on talking, as he tried to reach out to her. She sat down gently beside him and put her hand on his shoulder, moving her fingers to gently stroke the back of his neck. His neck felt rigid with tension and as she tried to soothe away the pain, Tom leaned fractionally towards her hand and his body relaxed.

He closed his eyes. ‘I still won’t cry,’ he told her, gulping back his words, and then a faint smile trembled on his lips. ‘You know how that feels, don’t you, Hol?’ The smile was fleeting and the despair quickly returned to his features. ‘I won’t let go. I can’t let go.’ He leaned forward, almost as if he was trying to curl himself up into a ball. His head rested against the glass in his hand and he rolled it across his forehead as if trying to soothe his thoughts. ‘No,’ he whispered through clenched teeth. ‘No!’ he repeated, his words coming out as angry sobs. ‘I won’t cry.’

Holly wrapped her arms around Tom tighter and tighter, holding on to him, willing him to feel her next to him. His whole body shuddered and the first tears that fell, fell softly, silently marking the breach in the dam that he had built against his grief. Then the heaving torrent of tears came, tears that even Tom couldn’t hold back.

His body was wracked with pain and the untouched drink in his hand slopped around him, spilling onto the floor. ‘I can’t even drink myself into oblivion!’ he cried, discarding the glass on the floor next to the bottle.

‘You’re going to be all right, Tom,’ Holly told him, rocking him in her arms as she too, felt a huge wrenching in her chest. She felt the pressure of a lifetime of tears building inside her and each of Tom’s sobs felt like a hammer blow against her own emotional walls. ‘Let out the pain, don’t hold on to it. Let it go,’ she said, giving Tom advice that she had refused to take herself.

‘I love you, Holly,’ Tom stammered. ‘I never told you enough how much I love you. I wish I could go back and tell you how much I love you just one more time, just once. I still love you, Holly. I always will.’

As the sobs slowly subsided, Tom’s grief spent for now, there was the sound of a ticking clock echoing across the room. Holly was still holding onto Tom, rocking him gently as if he were the baby that she hadn’t been able to hold. Her chest felt heavy and her body felt drained. Then Tom’s body froze as another sound cut through the air. Libby was crying. She had been woken up by her father’s sobs.

Holly felt her heart tug at the sound of Libby’s cries, but the wrenching in her chest was also the moondial pulling her backwards in time. Her precious baby’s cry echoed in her ears until all that was left was the soft whisper of a summer night’s breeze.