Yesterday's Sun

by Amanda Brooke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Holly self-consciously put her hand to her face. “Minor accident,” she explained dismissively before convincing Jocelyn that a cream tea would be more than enough.

  When it arrived it was clear that she had been treated to extra helpings. Jocelyn took the seat opposite her.

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

  “It’s a lovely tea shop. You’ve done well here.”

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

  “Is your son involved in the family business?”

  “Paul? Oh no,” laughed Jocelyn, the thought obviously tickling her. “He’s in the army. I don’t think he’d quite suit an apron.”

  “You must be very proud of him.”

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

  “Different in what way?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Thank you, Jocelyn, you’ve been a real tonic. You’ll have to let me return the favor and visit me again one day.”

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

  “I insist.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “So what are you having for breakfast, then?” Tom teased.

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

  “Oh,” he said.

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

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

  “You’ve found someone else,” she gasped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “The merger will mean major changes, cutting deeper than anyone expected,” Tom said.

  “You’re losing your job?” Holly asked, panic rising in her voice. 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 i
n 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.”