Although white worms of light were still crawling across her vision, she could make out vague outlines of other familiar landmarks. The orchard, the studio, the house. Then Holly glanced at the moondial and her heart froze. The orb and the brass mechanism had disappeared, as had the wooden box which had been left on top of it. Holly spun around, scanning the ground in case they had fallen nearby, but all she saw was a perfectly cut lawn. Her heart would have hammered harder if it wasn’t already beating to maximum effect. What just happened? she asked herself.
Shaking uncontrollably, Holly suddenly realized that it wasn’t only the shock that was making her shiver. The temperature had dropped by a good few degrees and her T-shirt felt pathetically thin. She tried to bring calm to her shaking body by concentrating on her breathing, which came out in icy vapour clouds that swirled in the air in front of her eyes. The calm was short-lived as she turned to face the house, seeking the comfort of her home. When she had walked across the garden earlier, her path had only been revealed by the soft glow of the moon. There had been no artificial lights leaching from the house because she hadn’t switched any lights on. Now the kitchen window was ablaze with light.
Holly could only imagine that the knock on the head had affected her senses and perhaps her memory was playing tricks on her. She took a deep breath and gave herself a moment to take a more thorough look around her. It didn’t help.
Something was wrong with this picture: correction, so many things were wrong with this picture, but she didn’t seem able to process her thoughts properly. As she neared the house, her mind could no longer deny the one thing that her sanity had refused to acknowledge. There was a conservatory slap bang in front of the house, running the full width of the living room up to the back door. The conservatory was in darkness, but soft light glowed from the living room beyond.
With faltering steps and a sense of lost reality, Holly crept towards the door that led through to the kitchen. Rather than walk straight back into what was supposed to be her home, she peeked through the window like a thief. To her relief, it was empty, but as she took in the detail, her growing confusion was ramped up to spine-chilling terror, skipping right past the niceties of growing anxiety. The kitchen was still her kitchen, same cupboards, same cooker, same fridge, even the same table, but it was most definitely not the kitchen she had just left. Holly started to wonder how bad the bump on her head must have been to explain away the vast assortment of baby equipment stacked up on every available surface.
Holly could only make herself move by convincing herself that what she was experiencing was some form of hallucination. She just wanted to get into the house and take refuge in her bed, blocking out the alternative universe her mind seemed to have created around her for her own private terror. She stepped towards the back door and tried to open it, but the door handle wouldn’t budge. Although the handle felt cold and solid, her hand didn’t seem to be applying pressure on it at all and Holly wondered if it was an after-effect of the shock she had received from the moondial. She wrapped her fingers tightly around the handle and, with the kind of effort it would take to open castle gates, Holly finally opened the door and stepped deeper inside her nightmare.
The room smelled different, a mixture of home cooking and warm milk as opposed to the smell of instant noodles and stale wine that she would have expected. Holly didn’t feel strong enough or confident enough to go too far into the kitchen, so she rested against a nearby cupboard. She waited and listened, hoping at least one of her senses was still working rationally. She wanted to hear nothing but the familiar silence of an empty house, but it wasn’t long before her hearing joined in the game that was pushing her sanity to the limits. She heard distant voices coming from one of the other rooms but moving closer. Whoever was in the house had just entered the hall. Holly’s eyes shot between the back door, which was her only means of escape, and the door that led into the hall and which could open at any moment.
Holly stood her ground. This was her house and she had every right to be here. So why did she feel like a stranger in her own home? There were two voices she could make out, one male, one female. They were soft and muffled and Holly couldn’t quite hear what they were saying above the thumping of her own heart. She did hear the now familiar squeak as the front door opened.
With a brief moment to relax from the threat of imminent confrontation, Holly tried to do a reality check. What was happening to her? Could this really be a hallucination? Had the bump on her head made her delusional? Had she been knocked out longer than she thought? Had she spent days unconscious in the garden while squatters had taken up roost in her house? As implausible as it sounded, Holly almost preferred to believe that option rather than consider the state of her mental health.
She walked across the kitchen and was about to take a chance and peek into the hallway when the door opened wide in front of her. Holly gasped and took stumbling steps backwards as a figure loomed in front of her.
‘Tom!’ Holly cried. ‘Thank God you’re here.’
She reached both arms towards him but then she froze. The man in front of her looked like her Tom, but there was so much about him that wasn’t familiar that it startled her. His hair was cropped short, much shorter than at any other time Holly had known him, but it wasn’t this that startled her most. He didn’t just look dishevelled, which would have been normal for him, he looked gaunt. But even this wasn’t what froze Holly’s heart to the core. It was his eyes. His beautiful green eyes looked towards Holly and then right through her. His eyes looked vacant, dead even.
Tom turned away from Holly without even registering her presence. He picked up a pair of ladies’ leather gloves which were lying on the kitchen table on top of a notebook. ‘Got them,’ he called out before turning and leaving the kitchen.
As the door closed and Holly was left on her own once more, she felt a wave of dizziness wash over her. Finally, she remembered to breathe. With every ounce of composure she had left, Holly staggered towards the door Tom had disappeared through and with more effort than she knew it deserved, she managed to open it by just a fraction. Tom was standing at the front door with his back to her. Diane was there too, standing on the threshold with her hand on Tom’s arm, talking to him. Partially reflected in the hall mirror, there was a third figure and, although she couldn’t be sure, Holly guessed it was her father-in-law, Jack.
Holly held herself back from a burning desire to rush into Tom’s arms and demand that he make everything right. Then she remembered the way he had looked right through her and fear kept her rooted to the spot.
‘You know where we are if you need anything,’ Diane was telling Tom.
‘I know, Mum. We’ll be fine.’
‘I know we’ve all agreed now is the right time to let you fend for yourself, but if you need me …’
‘I know,’ insisted Tom. ‘I know where you are.’
‘Will you leave the boy alone, Di,’ Jack said. An arm appeared around Diane’s waist as he tried to pull his wife away.
‘She’s such a fragile, little thing. Now if you’re ever unsure about what to do, I’ve written everything down in the notepad on the table. And I’m always at the end of the phone. If you need anything, ring me.’
‘I will, but you know everything’s organized. It’s not like Holly didn’t have everything planned right down to the last nappy for Libby’s arrival. You’d think she knew she was never coming home from hospital.’ Tom’s voice cracked with emotion and there was a pause as he gulped back a sob. ‘I know I can’t replace her, Mum, but I promise you, I’ll look after our baby. She came at such a high price.’
‘Poor Holly. It’s just so wrong. She would have made such a good mum. Why did she have to …’ Diane couldn’t finish her sentence, she simply let the tears roll down her cheeks.
‘You