Amanda Brooke - Yesterday’s Sun

‘And the outbuilding was his workshop,’ guessed Holly. ‘So what went wrong? Sorry, is that too personal?’

‘It’s a long story. A long, long story and I won’t bore you with it now. I’ve taken up enough of your time,’ replied Jocelyn, draining the last of her tea.

Holly was a little disappointed. Her interest in this woman’s past life had been piqued. She wanted to know the details and she didn’t mind if it took the rest of the day.

Jocelyn stood up, clearing up the plates and cups before putting them on the tray. ‘No, please, I can’t let you do that. You’re my guest,’ reproached Holly.

‘Indulge an old lady,’ Jocelyn said with a half-hidden grin. ‘I like to clean up after myself. Besides, I wanted to have a better look out the window and into the garden.’

‘You can have a full tour of the house if you like,’ laughed Holly.

‘Now that would be cheeky and I really do have to be getting along.’

‘It’s still raining,’ warned Holly. ‘Are you sure you want to go yet?’

‘A little rain won’t do me any harm. Besides, it’s good for the garden.’ Jocelyn turned and peered out of the window. Her body imperceptibly sagged.

‘Tom made a start on it, but I don’t think it’s been touched for quite some time,’ explained Holly, feeling the need to apologize for the ramshackle state of the garden.

‘I see you’ve resurrected the moondial.’ Jocelyn was looking intently at the stone table.

‘Moondial? Do you mean the sundial?’

Before Holly had a chance to quiz Jocelyn further, the phone rang. It was Tom. He had arrived safely at his new digs in Belgium.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ mouthed Jocelyn.

Holly was torn between being a gracious host and speaking to Tom. For the brief time Jocelyn had been there, Holly had forgotten how lonely she had been, but those feelings crashed against her chest once more. Holly put a hand on Jocelyn’s shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

With a series of determined hand signals, Holly was ordered to stay in the kitchen and Jocelyn saw herself out of the house. ‘I’ve just made a new friend,’ Holly told Tom. ‘She’s almost made today bearable.’

Holly treated herself to a large glass of wine and a deep bubble bath before bedtime, a combination which she hoped would guarantee a peaceful night’s sleep. Although it wasn’t unusual for Tom to spend nights away, their current separation was going to be the longest of their marriage. To ease their shared loneliness, Tom had promised to set time aside each and every morning and evening to speak to Holly on the phone, so with glass in hand, surrounded by soft pillows, Holly let Tom whisper sweet nothings to her as she lay in bed.

When they could put it off no longer, Holly reluctantly said goodnight and put down the phone. She turned off the lights but didn’t manage to switch off her mind so easily. Holly’s best-laid plans of a peaceful night became snagged in a tangle of thoughts. The separation from Tom, the new house, the village, the commission she couldn’t find inspiration for, all of these kept her tossing and turning long past midnight. To her surprise, it wasn’t thoughts of Tom and more particularly Tom’s absence that preoccupied her mind most of all. It was Jocelyn.

Holly had taken an immediate liking to Jocelyn. When the old lady had arrived on her doorstep uninvited, it had been the last thing Holly had wanted. But as it turned out, she had been sorry to see her go. There was still so much she wanted to know about the gatehouse’s previous occupants, and Jocelyn intrigued her. She had the distinct feeling they were going to be good friends. The thought comforted her and in some ways appeased her curiosity.

Try as she might to clear her mind, the effort simply made her concentrate even more on the thoughts she was trying to ignore. The hours slipped by as she tossed and turned until she eventually admitted defeat and stretched her arms wide then opened her eyes. The digital glow of the clock revealed it was 2:07 a.m. Moonlight was seeping through the window blind, filling the room with nature’s very own lunar mood lighting. Holly’s heart skipped a beat as Jocelyn’s words echoed in her mind. ‘I see you’ve resurrected the moondial,’ she’d said, just as Holly had been distracted by Tom’s phone call. Was that what had been playing on her mind? If it was, there was only one way to chase away the demons that had kept sleep firmly out of reach.

Holly tumbled out of bed and opened the blinds. A perfectly formed full moon had risen above a bubbling sea of clouds. The storm that had plagued the day was now a distant memory, receding into the night. Holly drew her eyes away from the moon and looked down towards the garden, which was painted in a hundred shades of grey. It wasn’t the white speckled blossom winking at her from the orchard or the occasional daffodil bobbing its ghostly white head against the night that drew her attention but the moondial. It was positioned perfectly in the centre of the garden to catch the full effect of the moonlight. It practically shone.

Though she couldn’t explain why, Holly felt drawn to the dial as it glinted invitingly at her. Once the idea of taking a closer look had formed in her mind, she couldn’t ignore it. She almost laughed at her own foolishness as she slipped into a T-shirt and jog pants and headed downstairs. She slipped on a pair of trainers and then, before going out through the kitchen door, Holly had another, equally bemusing idea. She retrieved the wooden box that contained the final piece of the moondial puzzle and took it with her out into the garden.

Spring hadn’t quite chased away the winter chills and Holly shivered against the cold April night. The ground was damp and the grass was so long and overgrown that her jog pants soon became soaked up to her knees.

Holly felt a knot of anxiety building inside her as she approached the dial. The garden that had seemed neglected and forlorn by day took on a more menacing feel by night as the wind stirred up the dead bracken strewn across the outer edges of the garden so that it rustled with the echoes of extinguished life.

She could almost believe that she was being controlled by an invisible puppeteer as she placed the box on top of the dial and opened it. She lifted the orb up to catch the moonlight and it glimmered with excitement as shards of light reached out like beacons from the prism embedded in its core.

Carefully placing the orb in the centre of the dial, where it clattered against the brass claws, Holly was mesmerized as she watched it absorbing the fragments of moonlight until the orb glowed into life, becoming a miniature moon caught within the claws of the dial. Her heart jumped as the mechanism seemed to come to life too and with an ancient clunk, the dial snatched the orb greedily in its claws. In a split second, thin strands of light spread out from the glowing orb, beams of light that started to turn like the frenzied hands of a clock spinning out of control. At that same moment, Holly put out her hand to hold onto the dial for support and an electric current shot up her arm.

Instinctively, Holly pulled her hand away as a shower of moonbeams sparked around her. Reeling from the shock, her legs went from under her and as she fell, her head glanced off the side of the dial. Holly landed on the ground with a thump and stars joined in the merry dance that flittered across her closed eyelids. She could hear the steady ticking of a clock fading into the distance, the sound replaced by the furious beating of her heart.

Winded and badly shaken, she tried to calm herself by taking deep breaths. She leant over, putting her hands on the ground to steady and compose herself. The grass beneath her fingers felt soft and lush as if she was kneeling on a well manicured lawn, not the tangled overgrowth she was expecting.