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 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 think
ing 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.
“At least a month.”
“And after that?” Holly could feel her heart wrenching in her chest.
“More traveling. 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 savored every kiss and every caress and when they made love Holly held on to 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 don’t have any neighbors nearby,” 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 halfhearted 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 toward 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 openmouthed, 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 flowers. “The dandelions are doing well,” Holly commented as they slipped out of the house barefoot toward 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 savor 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 color 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 that seemed to be floating in midair. It was a photograph of Tom and Holly laughing. A neighboring 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 skylights, was the center 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 percent happy with it. I’ve got another month to get her to sign off on the final design, 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, where she could work on it more easily.
The bottom section was made from plaster of Paris but painted black to represent the marble that 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. “It’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 her 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.”
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