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 his best to persuade Holly to stay longer but she was on a mission. She had one more job to do before she left for home. Holly said her goodbyes and then weaved her way back across London, heading for the British Library, where she hoped to get some inspiration for the type of stone she would use in Mrs Bronson’s sculpture. At least, that was the reason she kept giving herself.
The library was vast and Holly would have felt lost if she hadn’t already spent countless hours if not days searching through its obsessively stacked and indexed treasures. She wasted no time in tracking down the reference books she needed to decide upon the stone and even less time on deciding which type of stone to use. Holly closed the last book she had been leafing through and stacked it up with the rest on the reading desk she was occupying. She tapped her fingers distractedly on the stack of books. She hadn’t fooled herself. She had already known she would choose black marble for the base of her sculpture, it was the obvious choice, and the upper section would be formed from clay.
A man at the next table cleared his throat and stared meaningfully at Holly. Holly’s hand froze mid tap. She hadn’t realized she had been tapping so loudly. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed.
Holly returned her books and asked a library assistant for help looking up any records of Hardmonton Hall. It wasn’t the Hall that interested her as much as it was the origins of the moondial. Her desire to find out more about the dial had nothing to do with her hallucination, she told herself, she was simply doing research on what was a very interesting, if not mysterious, centrepiece in her garden. It took Holly quite a while, with the occasional direction from one very patient and helpful assistant, to gather all of two books on the subject. Sitting back at her reading desk, Holly opened the first book. It was a collected history of English architecture, specializing in Tudor manor houses, and Hardmonton Hall was listed in its index. Holly flicked through until she came to the relevant section. There were only a handful of pages devoted to the Hall, most of which were illustrations and plans of the buildings and grounds. It was in a plan of the ornate gardens that flowed from the back of the Hall that Holly eventually found evidence of the moondial. It was, or had been, located in what appeared to be a large stone circle. The circle was divided into four segments with an inner circle where the moondial would have been sited. From this centrepiece, four wide stone paths led outwards, separated by flower beds of some sort.
The second book was a wild card and Holly held out little hope that it would uncover any more of the dial’s history. It was a book on great archaeological expeditions in the nineteenth century and although there was no reference to the Hall itself, there was a reference to one of the previous Lord Hardmontons. Leafing through the book, Holly found the chapter she was looking for. She frowned as she skimmed through page after page of text. Charles Hardmonton had been a renowned explorer involved in expeditions all over the world and, as interesting as this local history was to Holly, she could feel a growing frustration building inside her.
Her impatience grew as she tracked Lord Hardmonton’s adventures from one side of the globe to the other and she prepared herself for disappointment as she turned each page. In a fit of pique, she skipped through to the last paragraph. Lord Hardmonton’s career as an explorer had come to an abrupt end when he fell out of favour with his sponsors during his last recorded expedition to central Mexico in search the Temple of Coyolxauhqui, the Aztec moon goddess.
Holly’s eyes narrowed in concentration as she read the name again. Could this be the connection to the moondial? Retracing her steps, Holly leafed backwards through the book, checking through the text again to see if there were any other references, but her efforts went unrewarded.
Never one to accept defeat easily, Holly knew she had reached a dead end. She closed the book with such force that the contents of the entire table rattled and then she stood up quickly and her chair scraped against the tiled floor.
‘Shush!’ hissed the
