She needed all the energy she could muster, because she was practically running on empty. She had worked nonstop on her designs, sketching into the wee small hours of the night with nothing to keep her company except the waning moon, which peeped through the kitchen window like a brooding monster, narrowing its eye in concentration over Holly’s shoulder.
Whilst she had managed to keep most of the details of her hallucination out of her thoughts, she couldn’t quite erase the picture of Libby from her mind’s eye. She used this to her advantage and breathed new life into the sketches she was creating. At long last, Holly felt a connection with the art piece she was trying to create. The downside to this was that she had also developed a connection with Libby. She may have only been a figment of her imagination, but Libby was the first baby that Holly hadn’t been terrified of, the first baby she had wanted to reach out and hold. Libby had sneaked into her heart and there was a part of Holly that almost wished that she was real.
The tinkling of the brass bell over the door announced Holly’s arrival at the gallery. The expanse of space that greeted her was bright and modern. White walls reflected the natural light streaming from the glass-fronted gallery, while strategically placed spotlights picked up the selection of brightly coloured and contrasting art pieces to entice the buyers.
The receptionist waved to her and picked up the phone, no doubt announcing her arrival to Sam. As Holly waited, she took the opportunity to do a quick stocktake of the work she had on display and to check out the competition. Holly sold a range of small sculptures through the gallery; some were figures, others more conceptual, but all had Holly’s distinctive style of mixing contrasting textures and colour. Holly’s work seemed to be becoming more commercial and it was the income from this type of work that paid for her and Tom’s luxuries. Holly felt a twinge of disappointment as she noted that only a few pieces of her work were being displayed in this front-of-house section of the gallery.
‘Looking for something?’ came a soft voice from behind her. Holly turned around to be greeted by the portly features of a middle-aged man with an obvious obsession for tweed.
‘Hello, Sam,’ beamed Holly, giving her old friend a kiss on each cheek. ‘I was just looking for some art pieces by the up-and-coming artist Holly Corrigan, but for the life of me I can’t see the kind of collection I was hoping for. Keeping them in a darkened room somewhere, are you?’
‘Oh, Holly, Holly, Holly. What suspicious creatures you countryfolk are,’ he admonished. ‘So you think as soon as you traded in your stilettos for wellies, I’d be putting your artwork out to grass too, do you?’
‘Well …’ grimaced Holly, feeling guilty that she would even suggest that Sam wasn’t taking care of her best interests.
‘There’s one of your pieces over there,’ Sam sniffed, pointing to the window front. Holly wasn’t sure if his stance reminded her of a school teacher or an air steward.
‘Another to the right there and two to the left, there and there.’
Definitely air steward, thought Holly suppressing a grin. ‘And the rest?’
‘S-O-L-D, sold!’
‘All of them?’ gasped Holly.
‘All of them,’ confirmed Sam. ‘The recession is officially over. You heard it here first.’
Holly grabbed his arms and they did a little celebratory jig in the middle of the gallery.
‘Well done, Sam!’
‘Well done, Holly!’ corrected Sam. He stopped still and peered at Holly’s face. ‘Is that a black eye I see beneath the camouflage of make-up? Has that man of yours been beating you up?’
‘Why does everyone keep saying that!’ demanded Holly. ‘Of course he didn’t. I fell in the garden, that’s all.’
‘Hmm,’ replied Sam. ‘Well, you can tell me all about your new country life later. First we need to deal with your favourite client,’ he whispered.
‘Oh, God, is she here already?’ Holly broke out into a cold sweat at the thought of what she was about to face. ‘Is Bronson Junior with her?’
‘Thankfully not,’ replied Sam, who shared Holly’s relief.
Holly was of course referring to Mrs Bronson’s offspring or, as Holly tended to view the baby, her latest fashion accessory. Holly might not be an expert in maternal matters, but each time she saw Mrs Bronson with her son it brought to mind a precocious child playing with a new kitten. She wouldn’t have been surprised if her client had turned up with the poor child peaking out of one of her oversized handbags.
‘Onwards and upwards,’ Sam told her, directing her up the stairs to his private office.
The meeting with Mrs Bronson went better than expected. Holly had two fully worked up designs to show her client, but there was only one that she felt able to put her heart into and fortunately for her it was the one Mrs Bronson opted for. It was a spiralling form, depicting not just a mother cradling a baby in her arms, but a whole series of figures below them, symbolizing past generations swirling up through the black stone base towards the two white figures. She would still need to complete a scaled-down version first of all for Mrs Bronson to sign off, but for Holly the hardest part was now over with. She had managed to create the concept and she was as happy with it as she could be under the circumstances and given the struggles she had put herself through.
The bell above the door of the gallery settled into silence and both Holly and Sam breathed a sigh of relief as Mrs Bronson disappeared into the distance.
‘Well, that went well,’ Holly said cautiously.
‘Don’t sound so surprised, the design is beautiful. Well done, you. I know it can’t have been easy.’ Sam knew Holly better than most and he knew all about her troubled childhood. ‘I did wonder if it was the right thing for you to take on, but you pulled it off. I don’t think I could have bluffed my way through it. Remind me never to play poker with you.’
‘What do you mean, bluff?’ Holly demanded, although she knew exactly what he meant.
‘Holly, I love you dearly, but, well, you’re not exactly mother-making material, are you? To pull off an art piece of this scale it takes some insight into all that mother-and-child nonsense and I’m afraid you’re just as bad as me: clueless on the subject.’
‘New home, new life. Who says I’m not mother-making material?’ Holly argued. She could feel the colour rising in her face. A week ago she would have agreed wholeheartedly with Sam, they’d had similar conversations before. But now, with Libby’s face appearing like a watermark over everything she saw, Holly didn’t want to hear it.
Sam laughed and hugged her to him. ‘Maybe you’re right, and I hope you are. Just promise me one thing …’
‘What’s that?’ Holly asked suspiciously as she unravelled herself from his embrace.
‘For goodness’ sake, don’t bring it with you when you come visit. What’s made in the country, stays in the country.’
‘I promise!’ laughed Holly. ‘Now enough of this, let’s get down to business. How am I going to replenish your stock?’
Although she loved the idea that her work was becoming sought after, she wasn’t prepared to simply churn out sculptures on a conveyor belt to meet demand. Taking on Mrs Bronson’s commission had been bad enough. Sam was persuasive however so she went through some ideas with him and promised to get to work on them if time allowed, once her studio was up and running in the next week or so. In truth, a heavy workload was going to be a welcome distraction during Tom’s absence.
Sam did