Book Club Reads: 3-Book Collection: Yesterday’s Sun, The Sea Sisters, Someone to Watch Over Me. Amanda Brooke
with me,’ he whispered, but then he left the room.
Holly felt close to breaking point and she was paralysed by fear. Her breathing was getting faster and deeper and she started to feel woozy. She was on the verge of hyperventilating. She heard Tom’s footsteps going up the stairs and then the creaking of floorboards overhead. For the second time that night, the sound of the baby crying sent her whole body into spasm.
The combination of the need for fresh air and the overwhelming desire to run away was enough to give Holly the strength to leave the house. She stumbled through to the kitchen, fumbled with the door handle before eventually letting herself out of the house and across the garden. It was still cold, much too cold for late April, and the wind whipped around her.
Holly’s eyes darted from one side of the garden to the other, wondering what demons lurked in the shadows to strip away the last shreds of her sanity. In answer to her challenge, Holly’s attention was drawn towards the orchard. The trees that should have been on the verge of blossom were now forlornly hanging onto withered leaves, fragments of a summer long gone. Holly stumbled on until she reached the moondial.
‘I’m not dead, I’m not dead!’ she cried out. She sank to her knees and curled herself up into a ball. ‘I’m here, Tom. Why can’t you see me?’ she pleaded.
Holly wasn’t sure how long she remained curled up in a ball beneath the moondial. Exhausted and cold, terrified and confused, she didn’t know what to do next. It was only when the kitchen light was switched off and the garden was etched in grey once more that Holly lifted her head and looked towards the house.
A few seconds later, a light appeared from her bedroom window. It was the soft glow of a bedside lamp. The bedroom blind was open. Holly tried to remember if she had left the blind open or closed. She sighed deeply. What did it matter? Everything had changed and Holly felt trapped in a world she no longer belonged in. But Tom was in there. If she didn’t belong with him, then where did she belong?
Holly rose to her feet and, beneath the watchful gaze of the full moon, felt an urge to go back into the house and run to Tom. She was about to take a step forward when the unmistakeable silhouette of her husband appeared at the bedroom window. He was rocking from side to side and although Holly was raging against the impossibility of it all, she knew he had the baby in his arms. The slow rocking motion of his body suddenly froze. Holly couldn’t see his eyes but she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was looking at her.
It felt as if the world was closing in around her when she fell under Tom’s gaze. There was a crushing weight pushing against her chest as the rhythmic sound of a ticking clock grew closer and then stopped with a thud. Whether it was the wind that whipped around her or just sheer exhaustion, Holly stumbled and reached out to the moondial to steady herself. The moment she touched the dial, a host of dancing moonbeams scampered around her. The garden became a blur and the air became heavier and a few degrees warmer.
Holly needed both hands on the dial to keep herself steady. She closed her eyes in an effort to stem the waves of dizziness that ebbed and flowed through her. One of her hands touched something on the dial. Holly blinked to chase away the shadows of light left by the moonbeams. It took a while before she could safely pick up what she had touched. She held it in her hands and a sense of relief washed away the terror. It was the wooden box. The dial mechanism and the orb had all reappeared too. The orb trembled benignly in the loosened grasp of the brass claws. Everything was as it should be.
The wind had eased and as Holly looked towards the orchard, the telltale white buds of spring sparkled against the night. Below her feet, the long grass was just as overgrown as it ever had been. Holly’s head snapped towards the house. Her bedroom window was in darkness, as was the whole house, minus one conservatory. The bedroom blind was rolled up but no figure looked down upon her.
Holly snatched the orb from the dial and threw it urgently into the box as if holding it would burn her fingers. Taking the box with her, she ran through the grass, not stopping until she was back in the kitchen where she quickly turned the light on. A quick check confirmed that there was no baby equipment, no notepad on the table.
The tentacles of Holly’s living nightmare were slowly releasing their grip on her heart and her mind. Stepping more tentatively into the hallway, Holly checked both reception rooms before heading upstairs. Her bedroom was empty, her bed a writhing mess of bed linen just as she’d left it. The digital display on the clock read 3:21 a.m.
Holly stripped out of her clothes, her jog pants still sodden from the wet grass. She crawled into the comfort of her bed and wrapped herself in her duvet. Unable to even begin to make sense of the last hour, Holly closed her eyes and closed down her mind. The sleep that had previously evaded her came swiftly and mercifully.
The ominous glow of the full moon had surrendered to the harsh spring sunlight by the time Holly was shocked into consciousness by someone banging on the front door. Jumping from her bed, she ignored the discarded clothes on the floor and grabbed her dressing gown. Her body ached all over as she made her way downstairs.
‘Sorry, Billy, I must have slept in,’ she apologized as she rubbed the last remnants of sleep from her eyes.
‘Now, now, Mrs Corrigan,’ tutted Billy. ‘You can’t go answering the door in your slinky nightie when there are builders around, you’ll have my lads dropping hammers on their toes.’
‘It’s an old dressing gown, Billy, and I think I’m more likely to frighten them off than anything else,’ retorted Holly. She knew she must look a state but was silently grateful for Billy’s gallantry as she tried to scrape back her hair into some kind of order.
Billy’s mischievous smile dropped and his playful tone was replaced by one of concern. ‘Hey, what happened to your face?’ he asked.
Holly leaned back and took a look at herself in the hallway mirror. The right side of her cheek was bruised and grazed. ‘It’s nothing,’ Holly said in a robotic tone as the memory of her moonlit walkabout replayed in her mind for the first time since waking.
‘If that man of yours has been knocking you about then we’ll be having serious words when he gets back,’ Billy growled.
‘Don’t be daft,’ Holly said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘I’m just a weak and feeble woman who can’t be trusted on her own. I tripped in the garden, that’s all.’
‘Well, it sounds like it was a good idea of mine to send Jocelyn around. I knew you’d need looking after.’
Holly was in no mood for Billy’s usual banter, but if she didn’t appear her usual self, who knew who else he would be sending around to check on her.
‘I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, but yes, it was a very good idea. She’s a lovely lady,’ replied Holly with a smile that was more genuine this time.
‘You need to get out more, visit people.’
‘Now if I promise I will, could you stop nagging and get on with your work?’
Billy saluted. ‘I aim to please. We should have the internal work finished by the end of the week, so if you want to start thinking about those bells and whistles you wanted to add, now would be a good time. After that, if there’s anything else you need, you only have to ask.’
‘Is that a proposition, Billy?’ gasped Holly with a half smile.
Billy actually blushed. ‘Erm, well, I was actually thinking, well, what I meant was, erm, the garden could do with a proper makeover. We don’t want any more accidents, do we?’ he stammered.
Holly shivered as she recalled the sensation of kneeling on the soft lawn. ‘Thanks, Billy, but I’m not sure I want to let Tom off the hook with that particular job just yet.’
She brought her chat with Billy to a swift end, promising to make him and his lads a nice cup of tea. With Billy dispatched to the studio, Holly took another look