‘Jocelyn won’t be calling, not today. Everyone knows to keep away for a day or two. Even Billy.’
‘Ah yes, Billy. I wouldn’t mind speaking to him.’
‘So he can finish your half-hearted attempt to landscape the garden, by any chance?’
‘My new job is going to mean more money. If I can’t be here to do the work myself, the least I can do is spend my hard-earned cash on making a beautiful garden for my wife. And I might just be able to afford another project I’ve had in mind,’ Tom answered cryptically.
Holly recalled standing beneath the full moon, standing on the well-manicured garden and looking towards the house. ‘What kind of project?’ she asked as the now familiar sense of fear crawled up her spine. She held the vision of the conservatory in her mind’s eye and willed Tom not to make the suggestion.
‘That’s going to be between me and Billy.’
Holly shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t want to hear something that might give more substance to her hallucination. ‘Suit yourself, then,’ she told Tom.
Tom looked at Holly open-mouthed, shocked and a little disappointed by her quick submission. He wasn’t used to winning so easily. ‘I will, then,’ he said, his bottom lip turned out in boyish petulance.
Feeling guilty at bringing Tom’s little game of words to a sudden end, Holly set about distracting him. ‘Well, if you want to size up Billy’s expertise, let’s go take a look at the studio. I’ll even let you visit half-naked. Let’s live dangerously.’
The weather was warm and there was a damp, earthy smell in the air. June was blooming and in the garden the spring daffodils had made way for the summer blooms. ‘The dandelions are doing well,’ Holly commented as they slipped out of the house barefooted towards the studio. She was only wearing a vest top and knickers and hid as best she could behind Tom.
‘Ooh, ouch, so are the nettles,’ he said as he led the way carefully along a narrow and overgrown path that marked the boundary between the house and the studio.
The entrance to the studio faced the road and was the only place where they risked being seen. ‘Morning, Mrs Davis!’ Tom shouted casually.
Holly gasped and crouched further behind Tom. Then she peeped over his shoulder before thumping him. ‘You don’t know a Mrs Davis,’ she said. ‘Now open the door before someone really does see us.’
Nowadays Holly spent most mornings in her studio and the bright airy space was a second home to her. Tom, on the other hand, had last seen the studio when it was still a building site. She looked at his face intently to savour the reaction. His eyes were wide in amazement as he took in the white walls and the sunlight that danced brightly across the walls and floor. Against the starkness of the white, Holly had hung a mixture of her own artwork and an eclectic selection of photos and other images to inspire her. Some pictures had been pinned to the walls and others hung on wires from the ceiling, creating small clusters of colour scattered around the outer edges of the room.
Tom walked around the studio as if stepping through an enchanted forest. ‘It’s amazing,’ he said at last. ‘I never imagined it would be like this.’ He touched a picture frame which seemed to be floating in mid air. It was a photograph of Tom and Holly laughing. A neighbouring photo was one of them on their wedding day, another was of Grandma Edith. ‘She would be so proud of you,’ he told her.
Tom’s attention was next drawn to Holly’s ongoing projects. Workbenches lined one full side of the room and a few pieces of work in progress were stacked up waiting for completion. The main work area, taking full advantage of the sky lights, was the centre of the studio and here a dust sheet hung over the sculpture Holly was working on. There was an easel next to it with some of Holly’s sketches taped to it.
‘So this must be the sculpture for the dreaded Mrs Bronson,’ Tom noted.
‘It’s a scaled-down version and I’m still not one hundred per cent happy with it. I’ve got another month to get her to sign off the final design and then up until Christmas to complete it. And then I’ll finally be free of her.’
‘Can I take a look?’ Tom asked. He knew very well that Holly hated him looking over her shoulder while she worked and often refused to show him any of her works in progress, not until she was sure in her own mind what the finished article would look like. She didn’t want to risk being swayed by other people’s opinions, as she always seemed to lose her way if she did. Holly decided to take a chance and pulled off the dust sheet to reveal the sculpture. It was about three feet high and was standing on a wooden box to raise it up to eye-level to work on it more easily.
The bottom section was made from plaster of Paris but painted black to represent the marble which would be part of the final piece. Above the swirling, black figures that formed the base emerged the white figure of the mother, or at least that was what the current mess of twisted chicken wire would eventually become. Holly had made better progress with the figure of the baby held in its mother’s arms. The baby’s face was smooth and white, the Cupid’s bow lips perfectly formed and its plump cheeks perfectly round. Holly had drawn inspiration not from Mrs Bronson’s photographs of her son, which were discarded somewhere on her workbench, but from the baby she had seen in her vision.
Tom traced its tiny face with a gentle stroke of his finger. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said.
Holly smiled but the treacherous wings of guilt fluttered across her heart. She felt awkward as she watched Tom look in wonderment at the beautiful contours of the baby, not least because her own mind had already created a vision of him holding and feeding the very same child.
‘I can’t wait to have a baby of our own,’ Tom said, as if reading her mind. He looked at Holly and saw the shadow of doubt in her eyes. ‘Now that I know what’s happening at the studio, we can start on that five-year plan of yours.’
Holly didn’t want to have this conversation right now. Her resolve to have a baby and prove her vision wrong, to prove Sam wrong, had withered and died when Tom had cast doubt about his job and their future. She stood in front of Tom speechless, unsure what to say.
‘You’ve changed your mind, haven’t you?’ he said, almost as an accusation.
‘I don’t know. Everything is so unsettled at the moment, maybe we should put off making plans for now.’
Tom’s body tensed and there was anger in his voice. ‘For God’s sake, Holly, when is the time ever going to be right?’
Holly wasn’t surprised at Tom’s frustration, but the anger shocked her. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, knowing Tom well enough to know that his reaction was about more than Holly’s usual prevarication over having children.
Tom sighed and the anger left his body with a low hiss like a deflated balloon. ‘I’m taking the anchorman job because it means I can give you and any children we may have a stable, secure life. If I had the guts, I’d tell them to stuff their job and go freelance, but I haven’t because I want what’s best for us – us as a family.’
‘Well, why don’t you go freelance? I’m sure you’d find enough work, we’d manage. My work at the gallery is selling well. Tom, we could do it if you really hate the thought of being a news anchor so much.’
‘It’s a good job and I can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And if it means I can be at home more when we do have a family then I really do want to do it. I just want you to want it too. Yes, it’s going to be unsettled for a year, but after that, we’ll know what’s going to happen and we can plan.’
Holly laughed but it was tinged with suppressed hysteria. ‘Do we? Do we really know what’s going to happen? What if we can’t have everything we want, Tom? What if everything comes at a price?’ Holly was conscious that she was teetering on the edge of a precipice and, with