Yesterday's Sun (10 page)

“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. The 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.

“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.”

Tom was sounding decidedly anxious. “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.”

“I 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 farther 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 only then did she notice 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 bear 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.”

4

N
ow you look like someone who needs cheering up,” Jocelyn told Holly. She had just arrived for their now-usual Sunday brunch and could tell straightaway 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 that the maneuver 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 Jocelyn 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 from 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.” Holly had known Jocelyn for less than two months, and she was surprised at how easily she could talk to her. 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 ever 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 behavior 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 toward 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 that 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 toward 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 leaned 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 were 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 lineup.”

“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.