‘Night night, sleep tight, my angel,’ Holly called out in a hushed whisper.
Left on her own, Holly felt lost and scared once more and she wondered what to do next. She looked around the room, which seemed remarkably similar to the room she was used to. There were a few additions that could be accounted for by Libby’s arrival, not to mention new scatter cushions and a rug, which were in exactly the right shade of green that Holly had already been scouring the shops for. There was also a pile of abandoned greetings cards on the shelf next to the smiling China cat that Tom had bought her from Covent Garden on their first official date.
Holly tried and failed to return the cat’s smile as she turned her attention to the pile of greetings cards. Picking up the uppermost card was almost as difficult as picking up Libby and when she finally had it in her grasp, she realized with a shudder that it was a sympathy card and let it drop. A cloud of dust billowed up and wrapped itself around Holly like a shroud.
She quickly stepped away and moved towards the fireplace, running her finger along the top of the mantelpiece as if she was a matron inspecting the cleanliness of a ward. It too was covered in a sheet of dust. Tom obviously had more on his mind than housework; still Holly couldn’t help but think it wasn’t a good thing for Libby to be in such a dusty room. Unable to help herself, Holly pulled at the sleeve of her fleece and used it as best she could to wipe away the dust. She stood back to admire her work only to watch in growing horror as a new layer of dust settled on its surface within moments.
Holly sensed she didn’t belong here, but she was determined not to be frightened off. Perhaps her life depended upon it. There was little else in this room to offer any clues, so Holly decided to extend her exploration to the study. She crept out of the living room and listened out for Tom. He was now upstairs, feeding Libby, and Holly resisted the urge to go up and watch them go through their bedtime routines. Instead, she headed past the stairs and entered the study, which was draped in shadows, lit only by the moonlight seeping through the window. She took a risk and switched on a lamp, surprised this time by how easy it was to flick the switch. Perhaps her presence was growing stronger along with her determination to make sense of everything.
Tom’s desk looked far more used than she had ever seen it. Leafing through the debris of his work, she spotted various research notes and scripts which fitted in with the news anchor position he would now have started, if this really was eighteen months in the future. There were pencilled notes at the edges of some pages in Tom’s familiar scrawl, although the sharpness of the postscripts and the harshness of the comments didn’t feel like Tom’s writing at all. It had a tangible anger to it.
Propped upright on a bookshelf, Holly found what she was looking for. It was a box file and it had one word handwritten on its spine. It simply said, Holly, and in contrast to his notes, Tom had obviously taken his time writing each letter perfectly. Inside the box there were official documents and letters, all relating to Holly’s death, but there was only one document that would point her to her destiny.
Her hands trembled as she held aloft her death certificate. The certificate recorded the cause of her death as an aneurism on 29 September 2011 following childbirth complications. Holly took a deep breath and focused on the sensation of her blood flowing through her veins and her heart beating rapidly in her chest. She was most definitely alive. ‘Can’t believe everything you read,’ she told herself, forcing a smile and ignoring the weight that this knowledge had placed on her shoulders.
Hearing soft footfalls coming down the stairs, Holly quickly put away the papers and switched off the lamp. She entered the hall just as Tom disappeared into the kitchen. He was back out in a matter of seconds with a glass in one hand and a bottle of whisky in the other. Holly followed him into the living room, although it was with some reluctance. There was something about the look on his face that had given her a sense of foreboding.
Tom sat down heavily on the sofa and stared at the bottle in his hand. He looked deflated, less like the man who had left the room with Libby bouncing on his shoulder and more like the ghost of her previous vision. Holly watched from the safety of the doorway, unsettled by the sense of desolation creeping across the room towards her and feeling the need to keep an escape route clear in case she had cause to use it. Tom poured himself a generous measure of whisky and swirled the golden liquor around his glass, staring into its depths.
He suddenly gasped as if suppressing a sob and Holly jumped out of her skin. She hit the door behind her and the half-open door closed slightly. Tom looked straight at her and for a second Holly felt his gaze upon her, but the connection didn’t last. Tom’s face lifted imperceptibly with expectation, only for a tidal wave of grief to sweep away all remnants of hope.
Tom shook his head and turned his attention back to the glass. ‘Hello, Holly,’ he whispered. ‘I know you’re watching me. I know you’re shaking your head at me and telling me to pull myself together. So why don’t you come through that door right now? Why don’t you march in and tell me to tidy up all this mess?’
‘Tidy up this mess, Tom,’ ordered Holly. Although she spoke in hushed tones, Holly willed Tom to hear her.
Tom made not the slightest sign that he had heard her speak, but still he answered her. ‘I can’t. I can’t even wipe away the dust, because I keep imagining your fingerprints there on every surface, on everything you might have touched, and I can’t bear to wipe them away just like you were wiped away out of my life.’
Holly gulped back her pain and she was torn between running towards Tom and running away from him. Instead she did neither. She stood transfixed to the spot as he carried on talking to her ghost.
‘I should have been an actor, I’m so good at making people believe I’m OK. I’m back at work and as long as someone’s there to watch me put on my act, I’ve got the stiff-upper-lip thing down to a tee. But that’s not the real me, Holly. Only you could see through to the real me. Oh, Holly, God, how I love the sound of your name. You wouldn’t believe the lengths people go to just to avoid saying it. They must think I’ll turn into a blubbering wreck if they say your name. Me, blubbering? Now that’s a joke.’
Tom laughed but it sounded hollow. Holly had edged closer to him as he carried on talking, as he tried to reach out to her. She sat down gently beside him and put her hand on his shoulder, moving her fingers to gently stroke the back of his neck. His neck felt rigid with tension and as she tried to soothe away the pain, Tom leaned fractionally towards her hand and his body relaxed.
He closed his eyes. ‘I still won’t cry,’ he told her, gulping back his words, and then a faint smile trembled on his lips. ‘You know how that feels, don’t you, Hol?’ The smile was fleeting and the despair quickly returned to his features. ‘I won’t let go. I can’t let go.’ He leaned forward, almost as if he was trying to curl himself up into a ball. His head rested against the glass in his hand and he rolled it across his forehead as if trying to soothe his thoughts. ‘No,’ he whispered through clenched teeth. ‘No!’ he repeated, his words coming out as angry sobs. ‘I won’t cry.’
Holly wrapped her arms around Tom tighter and tighter, holding on to him, willing him to feel her next to him. His whole body shuddered and the first tears that fell, fell softly, silently marking the breach in the dam that he had built against his grief. Then the heaving torrent of tears came, tears that even Tom couldn’t hold back.
His body was wracked with pain and the untouched drink in his hand slopped around him, spilling onto the floor. ‘I can’t even drink myself into oblivion!’ he cried, discarding the glass on the floor next to the bottle.
‘You’re going to be all right, Tom,’ Holly told him, rocking him in her arms as she too, felt a huge wrenching in her chest. She felt the pressure of a lifetime of tears building inside her and each of Tom’s sobs felt like a hammer blow against her own emotional walls. ‘Let out the pain, don’t hold on to it. Let it go,’ she said, giving Tom advice that she had refused to take herself.
‘I love you, Holly,’ Tom stammered. ‘I never told you enough how much I love you. I wish I could go back and tell you how much I love you just one more time, just once. I still