Yesterday's Sun

by Amanda Brooke

  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.”

  Holly tried to smile but she only managed to make her lower lip tremble. “We’ll see,” Holly told him.

  12

  I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but this might just be a blessing in disguise,” Jocelyn told Holly.

  Holly had felt shell-shocked after Tom’s phone call and although she still managed to function on a daily basis, she had stopped working at the tea shop. She had told Jocelyn that she needed to spend more time finishing off the scaled-down sculpture for Mrs. Bronson, but that was only partially true. She knew that Jocelyn would make her face the future head on and Holly wasn’t ready to do that yet. It was only when Jocelyn came over for Sunday brunch, and with less than a week to go before Holly was due to fly out to meet Tom, that she had to stop living in denial.

  She had always known that the day would come when she would have to turn from the path that held Libby in the future. Holly recognized what a dangerous game she had been playing by not going back to the doctor for her contraceptive injection and she accepted that she was being stubborn. She wouldn’t be rushed into making the decision that essentially put an end to her daughter’s life before it had even begun. But now it would seem that Tom’s new travel arrangements were doing just that. There were two clear options: to go to Singapore and risk becoming pregnant, or to stay at home and ensure that Libby’s life was erased once and for always. Holly knew which option Jocelyn was suggesting she should take. The old woman had once told her that the choices she had to make would be hers and hers alone, but it was becoming clear that she wouldn’t rest until Holly chose correctly.

  “You’re right,” agreed Holly. “I don’t want to hear that right now.” She was sitting at the kitchen table with her fleece wrapped tightly around her. As she glanced out the window, the snow was falling and the garden looked as if it had been covered in a white, sterile blanket. The moondial was unrecognizable, hidden beneath a thick layer of snow that had neutralized any power it might have held over Holly.

  “You’re supposed to be flying out on Tuesday,” Jocelyn continued, undeterred by Holly’s reluctance to talk about the future. “You still haven’t been to the doctor, so you and I both know that if you go to Singapore you can bet your life that you’ll get pregnant. And yes, the pun was intended.”

  Holly carried on staring out the window, almost as if she hadn’t heard. “Three times. I got to see Libby three times and I only got to hold her once. I can’t believe I spent my entire life never even contemplating having children and now I’d give anything to hold Libby again, just once.”

  “Even if you can’t have other children, maybe there’ll be other opportunities,” soothed Jocelyn. “Tom’s witnessed a lot of poverty and misery in his travels. There are so many children out there who need help. Maybe you could adopt?”

  Holly shook her head. “I don’t think that’s really an option. Tom wouldn’t be happy with saving only one child; he’d want to save an entire village.”

  Holly had already tentatively gauged Tom’s views on adopting and he’d told her as much. Although his view was influenced by the immovable conviction that they would have a child of their own one day, Holly was fairly certain he wouldn’t change his position on that issue.

  “Besides,” continued Holly, “that’s not the point. I’m not even thinking about other children. I’m only thinking about Libby. It’s Libby I see every time I close my eyes. It’s Libby my arms are aching to hold. It’s Libby’s smell I try to recollect. I’ve lost her forever and what makes it worse is that Tom didn’t even get to meet her. I know what we’ve sacrificed but he never will, not really. I’m not just betraying Libby. In some ways I’m betraying Tom, too. How will our relationship survive that?”

  “You love each other and you’ll survive this,” Jocelyn insisted.

  Holly gave Jocelyn a smile that broke her heart and her will. “Yes, I will. For my sins, I will survive this.”

  “You’re not going to Singapore? Please, Holly, say it out loud. Tell me you’re not going to Singapore,” pleaded Jocelyn.

  “I’m not going to Singapore,” repeated Holly as a pitiful sigh escaped. “Oh, Jocelyn, I’ve lost her forever and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself.” Her chest heaved as she felt the crushing weight of her decision bearing down on her.

  Jocelyn squeezed back her own tears. “Then I’m staying in the village for Christmas. You’re not doing this on your own.”

  “But what about Paul? He’s expecting you,” Holly asked.

  “He’s invited me over on Christmas morning; so far that’s all. I would be spending the rest of my time stuck in a hotel room, waiting and hoping that he’d invite me over again. I didn’t want to tell anyone because I was too ashamed. It’s my punishment, I suppose.”

  “Punishment? Paul should be proud to have you as his mum and if I ever meet him I swear to God I’m going to punch him!”

  Jocelyn laughed despite herself, but the sadness never left her eyes. “I don’t deserve to be his mum, and not just because of what I did to Harry. I was ready to take my own life and leave him to the whim of a wicked and violent father. The moondial gave me my life but not my son. I wasn’t completely forgiven.”

  “You’re a good person, Jocelyn, and I won’t hear another word said about you needing forgiveness. But if he can’t recognize that then his loss is my gain.”

  “Well, I’m staying here and that’s final. I’ll phone Paul and cancel. I think he’ll probably be relieved.”

  “I suppose I have a phone call to make myself,” sighed Holly. “But I’m not going to tell Tom until the last minute. I couldn’t face days of arguments and intensive persuasion. Christmas has been ruined enough as it is.”

  “But at least there will be other Christmases,” Jocelyn reminded her.

  Holly smiled bravely at Jocelyn but her face was a mask, a mask she was going to have to learn to live with for a very long time. With practice, Holly would have to close her mind to all her hopes and dreams of motherhood, and in time the maternal instinct would fade away.

  Holly worked on Mrs. Bronson’s sculpture with a sense of urgency, but it had nothing to do with the deadline or the imminent relief of finally getting Mrs. Bronson out of her hair. It was Holly’s guilt at failing her daughter that made her eager to finish the project. When the artwork was dispatched the day before Holly was supposed to fly out to Singapore, she closed up the studio. The full-size sculpture was still inside, draped in a dust sheet to hide the faces of the generations of mothers that Holly sensed were watching and judging her.

  The emotional wall that Holly had built was enough to get her through the day, but the night before her flight Holly couldn’t sleep. She wandered the empty house wrapped in a blanket, trying to find a corner where she could curl up in a ball and hope that time would never find her. Every time she thought about the phone call she would have to make to Tom, her stomach lurched. First thing in the morning she would tell him that she wasn’t leaving as planned.

  With dawn still a long way off, Holly wandered into the spare room that would never become Libby’s. It was cold and bare and empty. She squeezed herself into a gap between a pile of boxes and a suitcase, the suitcase that she should have packed for her trip. She brought her knees up to her chest and gripped them tightly, giving herself something to stop her arms feeling so painfully empty.

  The suitcase felt cold as she rested her head against it. It was made of dark-brown leather but it triggered a memory of a bright tartan suitcase fr
om Holly’s childhood, the one her mum had hidden behind the sofa on the day she left. She had watched in horror as her mum stood waiting at the front door for her husband to come home. She had barred his entry at first, telling him she wanted a divorce, yelling at him that she would take him for everything, screaming at him to say good-bye to their daughter and to get out of their lives. Holly had been terrified at the thought of being left alone with her mum so she had a spark of hope when her dad started to argue back. He pushed his way into the house and told his wife that he wasn’t going anywhere: if she wanted a divorce, she would be the one to leave. Holly hadn’t thought for a minute that they were fighting over her; it was the house he was refusing to give up. Holly had held her breath as the two stood facing each other in seething silence, neither parent moving—until a smile started to creep across her mum’s face. With a beaming smile, her mum had shrugged her shoulders and left her husband standing openmouthed as she retrieved the suitcase from behind the couch and then headed for the door. She didn’t look at Holly as she walked past her. There was no apology, no guilt to be wrestled with as she left the house. She didn’t even say good-bye. Her parting words were to Holly’s dad. “At last I get my life back,” she had snarled at him.

  Pushing away the memory, another one immediately took its place. Holly pictured herself standing in the room she was in now, holding Libby. She had told her daughter that she loved her; she had told her that she was sorry. But did that really make her a better mother? Rather than answer the question, she tightened her grip on her knees until she could barely breathe. She looked beyond the space where she had stood and toward the window where the blind was open wide. She recalled Tom’s gaunt reflection looking back at her; she remembered how he’d said he couldn’t cope anymore. It was this thought that Holly held on to, the only thought that stopped her picking up the suitcase and packing it up for a trip to Singapore and Tom. It was Tom’s face that Holly held in her mind as she found something she had thought was beyond her grasp: sleep.