Book Club Reads: 3-Book Collection: Yesterday’s Sun, The Sea Sisters, Someone to Watch Over Me. Amanda Brooke

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      ‘You’ve been meeting up with Billy quite enough as it is,’ Holly accused him.

      ‘Well, you’ll be seeing a little bit more of him while I’m away,’ Tom replied. He looked ready to slope back into the house, but Holly still had hold of his sleeve.

      ‘Tell,’ commanded Holly. She ignored the flow of adrenalin surging through her veins. She knew what was coming but she had a new talisman to ward off any doubts about the vision of the future. She and Tom had committed their five-year plan to paper just as she had promised. She had written it down with Tom sitting beside her at the kitchen table, in full view of the full moon and fully aware that the moondial was vying for her attention. The plan recorded that the rest of the current year would be set aside for Tom’s travels, in the following year they would plan for baby number one, by year three Tom was supposed to start writing the book he’d been putting off forever, and then by year five, maybe, just maybe, baby number two. Five years, all planned out, and Holly was there in the future with Tom. It was written down in black and white and nowhere did it mention dying in childbirth. It simply wasn’t in the plan.

      ‘Well, see this patio table,’ Tom explained as he guided Holly further away from the house so they could visualize his plans. ‘Say, from over there, just before the kitchen door, right across the back of the house in front of the living room and then out, say this much.’ Tom was now pointing excitedly to an imaginary line that reached past the current patio area and across the garden. ‘Imagine, if you will, a beautiful structure of glass and steel, perfectly placed to catch the warmth of the sun with the right amount of shade at the end of the day to take the occasional evening aperitif in our brand-new …’

      ‘Conservatory,’ Holly said blankly, finishing his sentence. She didn’t need to visualize the conservatory, she had already seen it first-hand.

      ‘So what do you think?’

      Holly wanted to tell Tom to rip up his plans, but she looked at his puppy-dog expression and couldn’t say no. That didn’t mean, however, that the vision she had seen would come to pass and Holly was about to make sure it didn’t. ‘I think that’s a lovely idea, but there is one suggestion I’d like to make before you finish off your designs.’

      ‘Suggest away, you are the artiste of the family, after all,’ conceded Tom.

      ‘I don’t know where you were planning on putting the door, but I’d really like French doors coming from the front of the conservatory. Just in case you were thinking of putting them on the side next to the kitchen …’ Holly held her breath. Not only was it where she had seen the doors in her vision, it was also the logical place to put them. But Holly was willing to sacrifice practicalities to prove that the future she had seen had been and always would be restricted to her imagination. If her mind could play games, so could she.

      ‘But that way, you’d have to walk back around to the patio, which would be in front of the kitchen,’ argued Tom.

      ‘You’ve just said I’m the creative one. Trust me, it’ll work better. It creates a continuous flow from the living room, through the conservatory and then out to the garden beyond.’

      The explanation sounded so good, Holly almost believed it herself and Tom didn’t have a chance to question her because at that precise moment the doorbell rang. Jocelyn had arrived.

      ‘I can’t imagine another family living here,’ Tom mused. He had used his journalistic skills to extract almost as much information from Jocelyn as Holly had and Tom had known her for less than an hour.

      ‘I can barely imagine you living here, Tom,’ Holly added pointedly, unable to resist the urge to tease him.

      With the sun in his eyes, he squinted at Holly with what was possibly meant to be a hurt look. ‘Distance makes the heart grow fonder.’

      ‘Well, your travelling seems to be taking you so far around the world you’re practically coming back on yourself. How far do you need to go to prove to your wife that you love her, anyway?’ countered Holly.

      ‘Oh, all the way,’ smiled Tom, before realizing Jocelyn was sitting quietly watching them. He coughed with embarrassment.

      ‘Don’t mind me,’ Jocelyn encouraged, ‘it’s been a while since I saw such love in this house.’

      ‘So what happened to your cruel excuse for a husband anyway?’ Tom asked her. Holly’s jaw dropped. She couldn’t believe how forward he was being, but before she could scold him, to her surprise, Jocelyn replied.

      ‘He killed himself,’ she answered candidly.

      The silence that passed between them left a chill in the air despite the sunshine. ‘I’m sorry, Jocelyn,’ Tom said to fill the space that had opened up an unwanted connection to the past.

      Jocelyn looked at Holly and seemed to read her mind. ‘No, it wasn’t in this house,’ she assured them. ‘When I left with Paul, Harry had nothing left to live for. If you want the honest answer, it was always going to be him or me. For Paul’s sake, I’m glad I left, but I carry the guilt with me too.’

      ‘Guilt? What on earth do you have to feel guilty about? You’ve told me enough to know what a horrible man he was. He made his choices, you made yours. Don’t ever feel guilty,’ Holly told her firmly.

      ‘You have a good wife there,’ Jocelyn told Tom. ‘Don’t you ever let her go.’

      ‘I don’t intend to,’ Tom replied.

      Holly couldn’t help but think how easily things could change. Life was so precarious and nothing could be taken for granted. She glanced nervously towards the moondial which was now half hidden beneath the new summer’s growth of grass and weeds. Jocelyn followed her gaze.

      ‘It came from Hardmonton Hall – the moondial, that is,’ she told Holly. ‘There was a massive fire that razed the Hall to the ground in the seventies and the moondial was amongst the few things that survived it.’

      ‘I read up on that. The family actually died in the fire,’ added Tom.

      ‘Lord and Lady Hardmonton perished, but their young son was away at the time. He never returned and what little was left of the estate was sold off.’

      ‘And that’s how you came by the moondial,’ concluded Tom.

      ‘I can see why you make a living from your enquiring mind,’ laughed Jocelyn. ‘Yes, Harry spotted the dial and just had to buy it, not because he liked it but because he knew I wouldn’t. We’d been married a good while by then. I think Paul would have been about ten and life wasn’t good, wasn’t good at all.’ She turned to Tom before she continued, ready to make a point. ‘Hard as it is to believe, the garden was beautiful back then. It was the one part of my life I still felt I had some control over, a form of escape, but Harry tried his best to spoil that too. He set up the moondial in the middle of my beautiful garden just because he thought it would sully it.’

      They all stood up without prompting and walked over to the dial. Tom did his best to stamp down the overgrowth to make it easier for Jocelyn to get to the dial. ‘I will make it good,’ he promised her apologetically. ‘Once I’m done with all of this travelling, it’ll be restored to its former glory, and that’s a promise.’

      ‘Well, make sure you do,’ Jocelyn answered.

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