Book Club Reads: 3-Book Collection: Yesterday’s Sun, The Sea Sisters, Someone to Watch Over Me

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 teashop. 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 a pinny.’

‘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 favour and come over to mine 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 on 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 into life. She wasn’t exactly a technophobe, but she didn’t particularly see the attraction of the virtual world that the Internet offered. She preferred to interact with a world she could experience with all her senses, but still, needs must, and 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 which 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 libellous in its day and wouldn’t be found in any textbook.

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 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 towards 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 grey quartz. The stone was the centrepiece of the temple and was rumoured 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 spilt coffee, which was now dripping off the keyboard and trickling towards 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 cloth. She grabbed a dishcloth from the kitchen sink, but before she turned back towards 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, found a link to the vision of the future she had foreseen.

The spilt 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 in 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 which 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 inside her, 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 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.