Yesterday's Sun (28 page)

“So tell me about this Mrs. Bronson,” Jocelyn continued when the silence that fell between them cried out to be filled. “Are you ready to hand over your sculpture yet?”

“I’ve practically finished. I don’t have a kiln here, so I’ve had to send the top section off to be fired. It’ll be back in a couple of days. Then I’ve just got to put the two pieces back together, and with a few finishing touches it’ll be ready.”

“I can’t wait to see it. I know it’s going to be beautiful.”

“I’m quite pleased with it, if I do say so myself. There’s a part of me in that sculpture that I never thought could have existed.”

“So do you think Mrs. Bronson will like it even though it’s not what she’s expecting?”

Holly shrugged beneath the bedclothes. “I couldn’t care less. I like it and I’m proud of it.”

“You don’t want to give it up, do you?”

Holly smiled ruefully.
How did this woman get to know her so well?
she thought. “No, I don’t, especially not to Mrs. Bronson. Now if it was someone like you, then I would.”

Jocelyn laughed to hide her embarrassment. “I couldn’t fit the scaled version in my little flat, let alone the proper one.”

“You know what I mean,” Holly said softly.

Jocelyn blushed. “Yes, I do. Now get some sleep; it’s getting late.”

“Yes, Jocelyn,” replied Holly like a dutiful child.

It was just after six in the morning and as Holly slipped out of bed, careful not to wake the softly snoring Jocelyn, she knew that sunrise was still over an hour away. Her need to see Libby consumed her and she could think of nothing else as she crept downstairs in her pajamas. She picked up the wooden box and stumbled through the pitch blackness toward the moondial, ignoring the overgrowth that scratched at her bare feet.

The orb clattered in the box as Holly grabbed hold of it in a trembling panic and slipped it into the brass claws. She could barely see the orb as it rattled into place, but she waited impatiently for the first spark of life from its core.

As the blackness of night closed in around her, she looked up desperately into the sky and it was only then that she realized why it was so dark. The full moon hadn’t waited for her, it had floated away and taken Libby along with it.

Every muscle in Holly’s body shuddered, and she lashed out at the moondial, hitting her fists against its uncompromising surface. She barely noticed the light from the kitchen window that reached out toward her or the blanket that was wrapped around her shoulders along with a firm pair of arms.

“It’s all right,” soothed Jocelyn. “Come in the house. It’s going to be all right.”

“It’s won,” sobbed Holly. “The moondial has won.”

“I wish that were true, but it isn’t over yet, Holly. You’ve got the hardest battles yet to face,” replied Jocelyn. “Now come away.”

As Holly let Jocelyn lead her back into the house, she thought about what Jocelyn had said. For the first time, Holly realized that the battle she was facing wasn’t with the moondial at all; it was a battle with herself. There were still choices to be made.

Two weeks before Christmas, Holly invited Mrs. Bronson to the gatehouse to officially accept the piece before she set about organizing the tricky process of arranging for its installation at her client’s country pile. She had known it would be a difficult meeting so she had also asked Sam Peterson to be there. She had a feeling that she would need someone to help fight in her corner.

She had been right to worry about the visit, not least because she hadn’t been in the best of moods to deal with the spoiled excuse for a mother anyway. Holly had other things on her mind. Her dream of Libby had plagued her since the night of the full moon and she deeply regretted giving up her last chance to see her daughter.

Holly’s determination to save her own life had been seriously dented ever since, and the thought of taking that last step to erase Libby from the future made her feel sick to her stomach—so much so that she hadn’t made another appointment for her contraceptive injection. She knew she was taking a huge risk, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to keep that connection open, especially now that she was about to give up the only physical connection to Libby, the sculpture she had made in her image. Time was running out and by the end of the month Libby would be gone and so would the sculpture. Her only comfort lay in the thought of Tom coming home and of course the secret hope that Mrs. Bronson would refuse to take the sculpture.

“She said what?” Tom gasped. Holly might not be able to see his face but she knew he was staring openmouthed at the telephone.

“Mrs. Bronson said she’s going to sue me for every penny I’ve got,” Holly replied glumly. She was sitting at the kitchen table with a large glass of red wine that had already been refilled once. It was late afternoon but the weak December sunshine had already been beaten away by the descending winter’s night.

“Can she do that? What does the contract say?”

“Oh, she could sue me,” Holly assured him. “Sam’s taken her back to the train station and I’m hoping he’s going to use his best negotiating skills to get me out of this mess.”

“So what exactly could she do?”

“Well, worst case is that I’d have to return all the money she’s paid me so far and then there would be some compensation, too. How much, I don’t know.”

“So if that’s worst case, what other options are there?” Tom asked hopefully.

“I suppose she might demand that I remake the sculpture the way I was supposed to,” mumbled Holly like a naughty schoolchild. That was one option she really didn’t want to contemplate. She would refuse point-blank to create something that she didn’t believe in. And she certainly wasn’t going to dismantle the work she’d already completed, not when it included an image of Libby.

Tom laughed. “I can’t believe she didn’t fall in love with it. Fair enough, it wasn’t what she was expecting. You did change the concept, but it was only for the better. What was there not to like?”

Holly had sent Tom a photograph of the finished article and although she knew he was biased, there really was no reason why any normal person wouldn’t love it. “I don’t think she liked the focus being on the child and not the mother. Besides, she said the mother looked like she had a man’s body.”

Tom laughed even harder, despite the bad news. “So she wasn’t impressed with my muscles then?”

“Your muscles?” demanded Holly. “I think you’ll find those muscles belonged to Billy.” Holly was trying to see the funny side of it but it was going to be a hard blow to their finances. “What am I going to do, Tom?”

“I promise, I’ll work night and day to pay off the horrible woman. I don’t want you to compromise your art, not for the likes of Mrs. Bronson.”

“Sam’s going to have to work wonders to get me out of this one. But anyway, we are where we are.”

“Well, that kind of makes my news a little easier,” stumbled Tom.

“What do you mean?” Holly heard a distant alarm bell ringing in her ears, although she was finding it hard to concentrate with the fuzziness that had been poured from the wine bottle straight into her head.

“You know how you told me to start thinking about the direction of my career and look at other options. Well, I’m not quite ready to throw away the chance of a secure job just yet, not when there’s so much uncertainty and a lot of competition for the work out there, but …”

“But?” asked Holly. It was clear that the doubts Holly had planted about his career had not merely taken root but had sprouted up and taken on a life of their own.

“I’ve been putting some pressure on the studio. I’m not due to start my new job until mid-January and these special assignments have gone down really well. It would be mad to give up now.”

“When and where?” demanded Holly, knowing he was talking about one more assignment.

Holly listened in silence as Tom explained that the new assignment was a documentary on the aftereffects of landslides that had devastated China. The Chinese government had given the studio a small window of opportunity to enter the country. The problem was, that particular window was for three weeks, slap-bang over Christmas. Tom would be going directly from one location to the other with a few days’ stopover in Singapore.

“So Christmas is canceled,” Holly said sulkily.

“No, not exactly. You could fly out to Singapore and we could still spend Christmas together, but I’d have to leave for China on Boxing Day. I know it sucks. But this really is a massive opportunity and great money, which helps you out of your little problem.”

“I suppose,” Holly said, not sure how this change of plan would affect not only Christmas but the rest of their lives and the deal she had to complete with the moondial.

“It might even be nice spending Christmas away. I can get you a flight first thing on the twenty-first of December,” Tom told her.

Holly put down her glass of wine and wished she had stayed clearheaded. The twenty-first was already a symbolic date in Holly’s mind because it was the date of the next full moon. The full moon had opened the door to a world that held her daughter captive and it felt to Holly like the next time the moon crept out of the shadows, that door to Libby would be firmly closed and her daughter would be lost forever.

The date, it seemed, was now going to be symbolic in other ways, too. Holly had thought it was her doctor’s appointment that would mark the point at which her path into the future would change. Tom had changed all that by unwittingly giving her a choice: to join him in Singapore and risk becoming pregnant, or stay at home and secure her place in the future at the expense of her daughter.

“Holly?” Tom asked, when the silence stretched between them.

“Sorry, I was just thinking,” she explained. “It might be difficult getting away.”

“What? Why would it be?” stammered Tom with a mixture of surprise and disappointment.

“I have commitments, too. Jocelyn is going away and I’ll be working in the tea shop.” Holly hated herself as the words came out of her mouth. She didn’t want to make this decision. She wasn’t ready.

“You’re right; it’s a stupid, selfish idea,” began Tom.

“Don’t say that. It’s not a stupid idea. I love that you’ve got another chance to do the job you love and you’re not being selfish. I am.”

“But it’s so far to travel and we’ll only be together for a few days.”

“No, it’s not too far to travel. Tom, I’d travel across the world to see you. I’d even travel across time.”

“So you’ll come?”

Before Holly had a chance to reply, there was a knock at the door.

“That’ll be Sam. I’d better go,” Holly told him.

“Tell me you’ll come,” begged Tom.

“I’ll come,” replied Holly nervously.

Jocelyn’s warnings had been well-founded. Holly sensed that the path that secured her future was becoming irrevocably tangled with Libby’s.

Sam looked weary and ready for a drink when he sat down at the kitchen table. “Is there one of those for me?” he asked, pointing to Holly’s half-empty wineglass.

Holly put a glass in front of him and filled it up before asking him how it had gone with Mrs. Bronson.

“Well, she’s not a happy bunny,” he said.

Holly winced apologetically. “Was she very angry?”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “I won’t even repeat the things she said about you.”

“And?” Holly asked impatiently. She didn’t care about Mrs. Bronson or even the money she would undoubtedly lose on the deal. She did care about her sculpture and was desperate to know what was going to happen to it.

“I think I’ve just about persuaded her to take the artwork,” offered Sam, although he was obviously holding something back.

Holly’s heart sank. “Really?” she said miserably.

Sam almost choked on the mouthful of wine he’d just swigged. “Holly! I don’t believe you sometimes. I know you didn’t want to take on the commission in the first place, but you’ve practically gone out of your way to make sure Mrs. Bronson wouldn’t get the sculpture. So, let me put your mind at rest. She doesn’t want the grotesque piece of rubbish you’ve created. Her words, not mine. And in truth she didn’t use the word ‘rubbish.’ I was being polite.”

“Well, I’m not making another one for her,” insisted Holly. She was swirling her own glass of wine but wouldn’t take a sip. There was too much to think about, although Mrs. Bronson barely made the list.

“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t do that to you. She will accept the scaled-down version, if you finish off the finer detail on it and have it ready before Christmas.”

“Well done, you!” beamed Holly.

“Don’t go celebrating just yet. You didn’t deliver the commission, so you have to repay her the advance, and there’d be no charge for the delivered sculpture. Essentially, she’d be getting your work for free. You get to keep your full-size sculpture, but you will need to sign an agreement that you won’t sell it. You can either keep it or donate it. It might go down well with the pagans around here. They can perform all their weird fertility dances around it.”

“Country life really does scare you, doesn’t it?” Holly observed.

“Not at all,” lied Sam. “In fact, your local taxi driver has just told me that there’s a big freeze on its way and if I get snowed in here, he’ll be happy to brave the blizzards and show me the sights. I’d bet he could name every sheep.”

“You’re a bad man, Sam Peterson,” scolded Holly, but she couldn’t help laughing at him.

“Yes, I am a bad man,” confirmed Sam, and this time he looked a little guilty. He picked up his briefcase and took out a beautifully wrapped gift. “A peace offering,” he explained.

Holly looked at him quizzically. “What on earth do you need to make amends for? I’m the one who’s caused all the trouble.” As she spoke, she carefully unwrapped the present. At first glance, it looked like a very soft, cream-colored piece of cloth but as it unraveled itself, Holly’s heart jumped into her throat. It was a comforter doll. It was the exact same comforter doll that Libby had been clinging to in her last vision and Holly held it to her cheek just as she’d seen her daughter doing.

Sam coughed nervously, taken aback by Holly’s reaction. “Apparently, the mother carries it around with her for a while to transfer her smell onto the cloth and then the baby feels safe sleeping with it when you’re not there,” explained Sam. He smiled gently at Holly. “Last time you were at the gallery, I thought I was a little harsh with you, mocking your brave attempt at motherhood. Of course you’ll make a good mother. I can see it in the sculpture. You’re going to surprise everyone, especially yourself.”