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

‘I put in a higher bid. You’ll spot a rather large payment at the duty-free shop on our credit-card bill.’

‘Well, I hope the crew will be looking after you on this trip too.’

‘They will, we’ll look after each other, don’t you worry.’

Tom sat down on the bed to put his socks on and Holly crawled up behind him and wrapped her arms around him.

‘But I do worry,’ Holly said, kissing the top of Tom’s head.

Tom pulled Holly around so that she was sitting on his knee. ‘I’m going to miss you.’

‘You’ll be back soon enough. It’s not for ever.’ As Holly wrapped her arms around his neck and felt her heart beating against his chest, she could also feel it ache. She reminded herself that the decision she was about to take was as much for him as it was for both of them and she tried desperately not to think of the one thing, the one person that made that decision so heartbreaking.

‘We could just stay here,’ Tom suggested, pulling Holly onto the bed and kissing her slowly and sensuously.

‘Don’t,’ moaned Holly. ‘I’ll never let you go if you say that.’

‘I love you, Hol.’

‘I love you too,’ Holly croaked, holding back the tears.

‘The taxi will be here soon but, oh, how I wish we had more time,’ Tom said, peeling himself from her and reluctantly getting up off the bed.

‘We will have more time. One day soon we’ll have the rest of our lives to spend together,’ promised Holly, squeezing her eyes shut against the vision of Libby’s beautiful green eyes staring back at her.

She lay where Tom had left her, watching him in silence as he quickly dressed and finished off his packing. A solemn knock on the door announced the arrival of the taxi. Tom leaned over and kissed the top of her head.

‘By the way …’ Tom said, kissing Holly gently on the lips.

‘What?’ she asked, looking up into his green eyes.

‘Your breath stinks.’ Tom smiled his beautiful mischievous smile.

‘Well, you’ve got a bogie hanging from your nose,’ countered Holly.

‘And with those loving words of endearment, I’ll leave you in peace. Go back to sleep.’

Holly wrapped her arms around Tom and held onto him tightly. There was another knock at the door, firmer this time, but Tom didn’t pull away, it was Holly who had to let him go.

The all too familiar sense of loneliness settled around her even before she heard the front door slam and the taxi pull away.

Holly had made little to no progress on Mrs Bronson’s sculpture while Tom had been at home but she couldn’t just blame her husband. She knew she had been deliberately prevaricating. The figure of the baby she was about to create would be based on Libby’s image, not Mrs Bronson’s son, whose photographs were now lost at the back of a drawer somewhere. She was torn between wanting to create an image of Libby and the fear of seeing her daughter’s beautiful, trusting face looking back at her. But Libby wasn’t the only reason she was prevaricating. Holly had been uneasy about the concept of the sculpture long before her embryonic maternal instincts had been crushed by the moondial and its rules. She couldn’t start work in earnest until her belief in the design was firmly established. She needed a second opinion.

‘I just don’t know what it is that’s missing,’ Holly said, staring at the sculpture. She had been constructing the figure of the mother and child from chicken wire and steel poles drilled into the marble base and it was a true reflection of the scaled-down version Mrs Bronson had signed off.

‘The base is absolutely beautiful.’ Jocelyn was standing shoulder to shoulder with Holly at the far end of the studio, as far back from the sculpture as they could get. The biting October wind outside was making the withered branches of nearby trees scratch forlornly at the windows.

‘Which means you don’t like the top half,’ Holly answered flatly.

‘Now I can hardly make a fair assessment on a twisted pile of chicken wire,’ scolded Jocelyn. She turned her attention to the scaled-down version and went over to trace her fingers along the figures of the mother and then the baby. ‘It is beautiful and I know you’re going to do justice to the full-size version. Is this Libby?’

Holly nodded, unable to trust herself to speak without her voice cracking with emotion.

‘She’s beautiful.’

‘And I’m a terrible mother,’ Holly added, voicing her guilt.

‘You have no choice, we both know that.’

‘I know. I just don’t know how I can live without her. I know I’ve been given a chance to save my life and it’s wonderful that I ever got to meet her at all, but it breaks my heart.’

‘So this sculpture, then,’ Jocelyn said, deliberately changing the subject. ‘It’s meant to represent the generations, each child becoming the mother of the next?’

‘Yes,’ Holly said with a sigh. ‘What I’m trying to do with the base is show the link from one generation to the next – and believe me, I was tempted to slip in a broken link in there somewhere.’

‘To reflect your relationship with your own mother, by any chance?’ Jocelyn asked, knowing enough of Holly’s past to understand why she had struggled with this aspect of the sculpture.

‘The only foundation my mother laid for me was a foundation of doubt.’

‘Libby has shown you how to be a mother and for that reason she’ll always be a blessing in your life, even if she can’t share it with you.’

‘I know. That’s why it’s more important than ever to get this right. I’m the first to admit that I didn’t put my heart into it at first, but now it’s about the only thing in this whole mess that I still have complete control over. I just can’t shake this feeling that something doesn’t work. It’s the pose that’s wrong, I think.’

‘Well, explain it to me. How does it make you feel?’

Holly concentrated on the scaled-down sculpture. She walked around it, following the spiral at the base, the vague images of the figures and then the upper section where the mother continued the spiral upwards. ‘The linked figures don’t just represent the connections between mother and child, they also show how each generation forms the base for the next. The spiral adds the dynamics to the piece. There’s always a corner to turn, venturing into the unknown.’ Holly paused and laughed. ‘Quite ironic, as it turns out, don’t you think?’

‘Not everyone has the chance to see what lies ahead,’ Jocelyn added, always the defender of the moondial.

‘Anyway, the mother and baby represent the present generation.’

Jocelyn tapped her chin, deep in thought. ‘So why is the mother holding the baby and looking down? Is that because it’s in the present?’

Holly stopped still. She walked quickly around the sculpture again. Then she rushed over to Jocelyn and gave her a big hug. ‘You clever thing! That’s it, that’s why it wasn’t working.’ Holly released Jocelyn just as quickly and rushed over to her workbench to grab her sketch pad.

Scribbling away, she explained to Jocelyn what she was doing. ‘I paid too much attention to Mrs Bronson’s need to be centre of attention, so much so that I didn’t follow the concept all the way through.’

‘I’m still not following you,’ Jocelyn said.

‘The base is a perfect representation of the concept, the spiral, the links, one generation providing the foundation for the next. The top half, though, the mother and child, that was only my naive interpretation of the relationship between the two. The mother is turned in a way that continues the spiral but the way she’s holding the baby, it’s all wrong. Protective yes, but she’s holding it like it’s a possession. She needs to be holding the baby up, supporting it on its journey into the future, carrying on the theme of one generation being the foundation for the next.’

‘Can you change the design now? Hasn’t Mrs Bronson already signed it off?’ warned Jocelyn.

‘To hell with Mrs Bronson. It’s my work and I struggled with this piece from the very beginning. I haven’t been able to fully connect with it because I knew something wasn’t quite right. I put a part of me in every piece I create, but with this sculpture I’m putting in a big piece of my heart and all of my soul. Now I know what’s wrong, I have to change it.’

Jocelyn looked at Holly and smiled. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve seen that twinkle in your eye.’

Holly smiled back at Jocelyn. She was right. For the last few months, Holly had seen each day as a battle with her emotions and working on the sculpture was a challenge. A piece of the jigsaw had now fallen into place and Holly was eager to demolish the chicken wire structure and start again from a new perspective.