LITMIR.BIZ

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Tom told her, shaking his head in disbelief.

      Holly traced her fingers across its cold, smooth surface. Her fingers tingled as if a faint charge of electricity had flowed up from the stone and she pulled her hand away.

      ‘Does it feel weird to you?’ Holly asked, unsure if she had imagined it.

      Tom gave her a puzzled look and then stroked the surface of the slab. ‘Feels like stone to me,’ he assured her. ‘What were you expecting it to feel like?’

      Holly tentatively touched the stone again and this time there was no tingling sensation. She shook her head, dismissing the thought. ‘Nothing, it’s just me. Can we move it?’

      ‘And do what? You seriously think we can lift it onto the plinth?’

      ‘Yes, of course.’ Holly could visualize the stone circle balanced perfectly on top of the plinth and taking centre stage in the garden. It belonged in its rightful place and Holly wasn’t going to rest until it was moved.

      ‘Are you sure you don’t want to ask the builders?’

      ‘Are you a man or a mouse?’ Holly stood with her hands on her hips, challenging him.

      ‘I’m a man, of course. But it doesn’t help that my only partner in crime is a feeble woman.’

      ‘Just get on with it,’ warned Holly.

      Holly put her hands on the stone again, almost hoping its latent power would help them with the task that lay ahead. Tom joined her and they dug their hands deep into the dirt to find a hold. As they lifted the slab, Tom’s face went a beautiful shade of puce and he grunted and groaned. Holly matched him groan for groan and could feel the veins in her neck throbbing with the effort. After what seemed like an eternity of laborious shuffling, they dropped the stone to the ground to take a rest.

      ‘Not bad,’ panted Tom.

      ‘Sure,’ gasped Holly. ‘We’ve moved it all of six inches.’ She looked over at the plinth, which was still about twenty feet away. ‘At this rate, we’ll get there in three days and two hernias.’

      There was a tut-tut of disapproval behind her. Holly turned to see Billy shaking his head.

      ‘Mr C, I’m disappointed in you. You should know better than to treat your lady like a common labourer,’ he said, before turning around to his workmates who had followed him into the garden. ‘No offence, lads.’

      Holly was about to tell Billy that heavy lifting was an occupational hazard as far as she was concerned, but then she thought better of it. ‘My knight in shining armour,’ she said.

      Tom groaned as he tried to straighten his back. ‘Mine too,’ he said, winking at Billy.

      Billy and his crew of builders lifted up the stone slab as if it were made of balsa wood and two minutes later they were lifting it over the plinth.

      ‘Hold on a minute,’ Holly shouted. She had realized that the inscription was still upside down.

      With a little more effort, the slab was turned over and placed on top of the plinth. It was a perfect fit. Everyone gathered around the newly formed table and stared at it.

      ‘It’s a clock,’ one of Billy’s lads said.

      ‘And it’s telling me it’s time to get back to work,’ replied Billy pointedly.

      The builders disappeared as quickly as they had arrived, leaving Holly and Tom alone with their puzzle. Billy’s lad had been right about it looking like a clock. The top had a large dial carved with Roman numerals in much the same way as a traditional clock. There was still a gaping hole about two inches deep in the centre of the dial where the top of the plinth didn’t reach the surface. It was only now that Holly noticed that there were grooves and notches in the upper surface of the plinth and this must be where the dial’s mechanism would fit, the mechanism which was no doubt made up from the box of gizmos Billy had discovered. As well as the inscription running around the outer edge, there was an assortment of symbols, similar to those on the box, etched beautifully into the stone surface.

      ‘It’s a sundial,’ Holly said.

      ‘It’s going to make a great feature in the garden.’

      ‘All I need to do now is work out how to fit all the cogs into it and get it to work,’ Holly replied, eager to return to the kitchen to retrieve the wooden box and its contents.

      ‘Well, I’ve done all the hard work, so I’ll leave the rest to you. I’ve still got plenty of clearing to do. Unless you want to help me?’ offered Tom.

      ‘Didn’t you hear what Billy said? I’m not a common labourer,’ grinned Holly.

      Holly spent the rest of the afternoon fitting the pieces of the puzzle together. When she had finished, all the cogs were in place in the centre of the dial. Uppermost were four claws, pointing towards the skies, reaching out and waiting desperately to grasp the glass orb. Holly dropped the orb into the claws and it rattled into place, although the claws were opened too wide to hold it snugly. The reflection from the sun as it glinted off the prism deep inside the orb was painfully bright. Holly called Tom over and they both stepped back to admire their new garden centrepiece.

      ‘I thought a sundial was supposed to use shadows, not reflections from the sun,’ Tom said as he squinted at the orb. He tried to push it down further into the mechanism to see if the claws would close further around it, but the dial creaked stubbornly and refused to move. ‘Looks like you didn’t put it together properly.’

      Holly thumped him.

      ‘What was that for?’

      ‘You’re not supposed to force the claws like that.’

      ‘How do you know?’ asked Tom.

      ‘I just do,’ replied Holly, a frown appearing on her brow. She didn’t know anything about sundials, but this one made her feel uncomfortable. She removed the orb and put it back in the box.

      ‘I’ll put this somewhere safe. I don’t suppose it’s a good idea reflecting sunlight across the garden when there’s so much deadwood still around.’

      ‘If that’s a hint, then I’ll get back to work. Time is running out.’

      Tom’s words sent a shiver down Holly’s spine. She had a sudden sense of foreboding that she couldn’t quite explain.

       Chapter 2

      The house felt empty. Tom had left for Belgium in the early hours of the morning. Holly had clung onto him until his taxi arrived and Tom had had to prise her fingers away from her vice grip on the lapels of his jacket as she gave him one final kiss, a kiss that would have to last her for six whole weeks.

      ‘It won’t be for long. I’ll be back before you know it and, besides, it’s less than two hours away by plane. If you need me, I could be back in no time at all.’

      ‘I should come with you. Whose stupid idea was it anyway for me to stay at home?’

      ‘Yours,’ answered Tom, as kindly as he could.

      He was right, it had been her idea. She had to accept that she was at a critical point in her career. Moving out of the city when her work was starting to receive critical acclaim had been a huge risk. Moving out of the country would be vocational suicide.

      She had retreated to her bed, where she allowed herself to wallow in self-pity as she sensed the distance growing between them by the minute. She knew she was being self-indulgent; it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been on her own before. She could quite easily fend for herself, but that wasn’t the point. Her dream had been to move into the village with Tom, not to be on her own. As she lay in bed, the cheerful birdsong that accompanied the dawning of the new day only served to mock Holly. At least the weather was a little more sympathetic as the storm clouds gathered overhead. Holly pulled the bedcovers over her

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