‘I can’t believe I have to fly home today.’
Rupert was gazing up at her, his blue eyes ringed with sleep and a mosquito bite rising on his cheek. She’d managed to slip back under the covers next to him undetected, and now she reached across and stroked his hair.
‘I know. I wish you could stay too,’ she told him, meaning it. ‘But I’ll be back myself in a few days. I have to stay and deal with this estate agent that’s coming round later.’
‘Are you sure you want to sell?’ Rupert asked. It was the first time he’d questioned the decision since reading the original letter.
‘Yes.’ She nodded at him. ‘It’s beautiful here, but I want to put the past in the past, like you said. And anyway, I’ll need some money to start this business of mine, won’t I?’
‘You’re an amazing person, you know that?’ He had started to kiss her neck, and Holly felt a stab of guilt amidst the familiar flutterings of lust.
‘I’m really not,’ she argued, but he silenced her with a kiss.
Sex with Rupert, she realised afterwards, was rather like eating a huge custard doughnut: it felt amazing at the time, but didn’t really provide you with any lasting goodness. Still, she scolded herself, being able to do something that felt amazing whenever you wanted could never be called a bad thing. In fact, after the intensity of Aidan, being with Rupert was like slipping into her comfiest clothes. She knew how to be and how to make him happy and, as she watched him skip off for a shower, she didn’t see why she wouldn’t just be able to keep doing it for the rest of her life.
In the end, Rupert rode to the airport on the back of Holly’s moped with his gym bag strapped across his back. Popping into Kostas’ shop first to pick up some snacks for his flight, Holly bumped into Annie at the till and promised to stop in for a drink later that evening. She felt a bit guilty for neglecting her new friend, but she hadn’t wanted her to meet Rupert and have to do all the introductions. Annie knew that she’d spent a few days driving around the island with Aidan, even if she had no idea what had happened after that, and Holly didn’t relish the idea of having to talk about it to Annie in front of her boyfriend.
‘Promise to call me later,’ Rupert said, hugging her extra tight as they waited for the check-in desk to open.
‘I promise.’ Holly smiled.
‘I can’t believe I’ve only been here a few days and so much has happened,’ he added. He looked so relaxed and happy in his unbuttoned white shirt, his hair uncharacteristically free of any product and the beginnings of a tan across his cheeks. Holly hugged him again, but inside she was agreeing wholeheartedly with what he’d just said. Thank God he didn’t realise just how on the money he was.
Rupert collected his boarding card and then proceeded to tell her over and over that he was going to miss her, that he’d call her the minute he got back to London, and that he couldn’t wait for her to move in with him. It felt like a scene from a cheesy movie, but she couldn’t feel anything close to the unbridled joy that he was radiating. The huge, dark secret of her betrayal was sitting up on her shoulders like a giant squid – sticky and clinging and dangerous.
She drove back to the house slowly, taking in the scenery as she went. She couldn’t believe that in just a matter of days she’d be back in London, and all these brilliant blues and greens would be replaced with greys, and the scent of pine and lemons tingling her nose would instead be petrol fumes and commuters’ stale sweat. The agent was coming round at 4 p.m. to view and value the house, which meant she had around an hour to get the place looking respectable. She’d put all the bedding into the rickety old washing machine before they left, so this was where she headed first.
‘What the—?’
Holly gasped in horror as she pulled out the once-white sheets and covers. They were soaking wet and streaked with – she leaned forward and sniffed – mud. Thank goodness it was only mud. There must have been some already in the machine. She hadn’t checked it, but then why would she?
‘Bloody hell!’ she swore, dumping the sodden bedding on the kitchen floor and switching the machine on to a short rinse to clear out the drum. There was no way she’d have these done in time now, and the uncovered mattresses upstairs were dotted with age-old stains from God only knew what.
Standing up in a temper, Holly smacked the top of her head on the bottom of a cupboard door and swore again, this time with feeling. What the hell was it doing open? The door creaked resentfully, earning itself a violent slamming shut from Holly. Her feeling of satisfaction was short-lived, however, because a split second later there was a cracking sound and the door actually fell off its hinges and clattered on to the floor by her feet.
What the hell was going on? Was the house fighting back?
She forced herself to take a few deep breaths and calm down. What was it Joy the counsellor had told her about negativity? It attracts more negativity. Let yourself become enraged by a broken cupboard door and you’re more likely to stub your toe. Or something.
As she stood there, doing her best to quell the rage, her phone beeped.
When are you coming back? the message read. This place is even worse without you here :( xx. Aliana was clearly missing her. Holly realised with yet another stab of guilt that she hadn’t even bothered to text her friend once since she arrived. She was going to have a fit when she found out about Holly moving in with Rupert.
I miss you too, she typed back, before adding, Have LOTS to tell! C U soon xx. If she really was going to make a go of this new life with Rupert, then she would have to make more effort with her female friends too. Aliana was probably the closest thing she had to a best one, even if they did have a way to go, and perhaps she should ask Penelope and Clemmie if they wanted to go shopping or out to lunch. The thought made her pull a face.
Her phone beeped again. This time Aliana had just written the word ‘tease’ followed by about fifty exclamation marks. Holly giggled at that and headed upstairs, only to find that two of the pictures she’d hung up along the landing had fallen off the wall, taking a heap of dust and plaster with them.
‘Great. Thanks,’ she told them, heading back the way she’d come to fetch a dustpan and brush. She’d only just shoved the last of the cleaning fluids back under the sink when there was a knock at the door.
‘Co-ming!’ she yelled, pausing to straighten the tablecloth and release her hair from its messy ponytail. Grabbing the handle, she swung the door open and tried her best to arrange her face into a welcoming expression. It wasn’t the estate agent.
Aidan looked dreadful. His hair was sticking up at all angles and his face was pinched and drawn. There was an untidy mess of days-old stubble across his jaw that was speckled with grey and ginger hairs and a large smear of mud on his faded blue T-shirt.
‘You look awful,’ she blurted without thinking.
He had the grace to smile slightly at this, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
‘Can I come in?’
He had a bloody nerve.
‘I’m expecting someone,’ she told him.
‘Oh?’ He raised a quizzical eyebrow. It irritated Holly that he felt able to ask, as if he had any right to know her business after what had happened over the past few days. He’d reeled her in and then spat her out, rubbing Clara in her face without so much as a word of explanation. She could feel her hands starting to shake and clenched her fists.
‘I’m having the place valued.’ She looked at the floor. ‘I need to sell it.’
‘You know that’s not what Sandy wanted,’ Aidan said stiffly. She could feel his glare but refused to look up.
‘Sandy’s not here to make that decision,’ she told him, deliberately making her tone cold and stern. ‘She left me this house, therefore it’s up to me what I do with it.’
‘What’s happened to you?’ Aidan reached across to take her hand, but she snatched it away.
‘I got my head out of the clouds,’ she sighed. ‘I realised that I’d been living in a fantasy world and
that I needed to wise up.’
‘You mean, your boyfriend told you to wise up?’ He added an unpleasant emphasis to the word ‘boyfriend’, and Holly felt her hackles rise.
‘No,’ she finally looked at him. ‘My boyfriend didn’t tell me to do anything – but if he had, then he has a lot more right to than you, and more than some aunt I never knew, either.’
‘Did what happened between us not mean anything to you?’ he asked now. His eyes were shining, but Holly couldn’t tell if he was upset or just very angry.
‘What does it matter?’ she said. She suddenly felt very weary with it all: the house, him, Rupert, this whole place. ‘I have Rupert and you clearly have Clara back in your life again. What?’
He had actually started to laugh at her. The bastard was laughing at her.
‘I’m glad you find it so funny,’ she snarled. Aidan opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment the estate agent walked along the path, holding his hand up in greeting. Pushing Aidan firmly to one side, Holly beckoned the Greek man inside and slammed the front door shut behind her.
She was still seething with anger and frustration an hour later, despite being told by the agent that the house was ‘very nice, yes’ and that he couldn’t foresee any problems selling it, although, given the current ‘crisis’, it may well take some time. The stained mattresses, broken cupboard door and holes in the upstairs walls had elicited nothing more than a sniff from him, so the house’s plan to fight back hadn’t paid off. When the man joked that maybe a ‘ghost’ was to blame, Holly felt a tickle of discomfort creep all the way along her spine.
She didn’t want to risk Aidan coming over again or give in to the annoying need she had to go to him, so she left at the same time as the agent, locking the doors behind her and clambering quickly on to her moped. She had no idea where she was heading, instead just feeling the need to drive until the bubbles of unease subsided. She headed towards Kalamaki, but instead of turning left at the crossroads and driving into town, Holly aimed right and followed the coastal road around past the beaches of Porto Zoro and Porto Roma and down into Vasilikos. She’d never been to this part of the island before and felt safe that nobody would think to look for her here. Nobody being Aidan.
The beach here was much wider than those in Laganas and Kalamaki, and every sun lounger was occupied. Couples played bat and ball along the seafront and kids filled their plastic buckets with soggy sand. Holly was happy to stroll anonymously among them, stopping only to pick up the occasional pebble and turn it over in her hand. She knew that selling the house was the right decision – it was the only decision that made any sense – but if that was really the case, then why did it feel so wrong? Aidan had stung her with his comment about Sandra, but that just made her all the more determined to go through with it. She wanted to hurt his feelings so that he understood what it felt like. When she thought about him with Clara it still caused her so much pain that she felt almost winded by it.
Being in Zakynthos had opened her eyes to what it felt like to belong. It had felt like a home, this place, even though she’d only been here for eleven days. Whether it was the weather or the Greek people, or the fact that her mother had spent so much time here, Holly didn’t know – but she did know that she’d never felt like this before. Although perhaps she was being sentimental and it was simply that it just happened to be the place where she’d finally found a way to be honest about who she really was. Opening up to Aidan, even if it had turned out to be a mistake, had altered something inside her. It had made her able to be herself in front of Rupert for the first time ever – and it had given her the confidence to admit what her real passion was in life. Try as she might – and she really did – Holly couldn’t quite bring herself to hate her Irish nemesis.
Despite the afternoon turning to evening and the air growing cooler as the light faded into the mountains, she waited until it was almost dark before she headed back to Lithakia. The roads were twisty and peppered by blind corners, so she eased off on the throttle and enjoyed the feel of the air as it tangled her hair around her bare shoulders.
Parking the moped outside the front of Kostas’ shop, which was shut for the night, she headed straight into Annie’s bar. It was busier than usual tonight, and almost every table was overflowing with a variety of brightly coloured cocktails. Scuttling up to the bar, Holly slid on to a stool and promptly jumped off it again in fright as a wobbly-bunned head popped up from behind the till.
‘Holly! Darling! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.’
Holly managed to laugh. In fact, it actually felt really good to laugh after the day she’d just had, and Annie was quick to join in.
‘It’s so busy,’ she said, gratefully accepting the glass of wine that Annie had hurriedly poured for her.
‘A big group arrived at the huge villa on the hill over in Keri today, and they’re all keen to get on the sauce. Can’t say I blame them.’
Holly nodded. Annie’s bar was the first place she’d headed on her first day here, too. There was something nice and homely about the place, with its rather worn-looking wicker chairs and flickering neon signs. Annie had covered the entire wall behind the bar with photos, and Holly squinted over her head at one in particular.
‘Is that …?’ she asked, standing up in her stool to lean across and get a better look.
Annie frowned and turned to look in the direction that Holly was pointing, before throwing up her hands with a squeal. ‘Yes! Of course! I can’t believe I didn’t show you this the other night.’ Reaching across, she plucked the photo out from beneath its pin and placed it on the bar.
Holly had done the maths already and deduced that Sandra would have been around fifty when she died – no age at all – but this photo must have been taken a few years ago, because her aunt didn’t look the slightest bit ill. With her glossy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, a bronze glow on her smiling face and a bottle of beer clutched in a hand adorned with rings, she looked about the same age as Holly. Next to Sandra in the photo, also smiling broadly and also clutching a bottle of beer, was Aidan.
‘I told you those two were close,’ Annie said, as Holly blinked back the tears. Aidan looked like he’d just been laughing when the camera was brought out. His eyes were focused on something or someone out of sight, and his hair was all over the place as usual. Holly dragged her eyes off his face and looked again at Sandra, realising with a further stab of sadness that this was just how Jenny Wright would have looked, had she made it past her fortieth birthday.
‘Are you okay, sweetheart?’ Annie had appeared next to her and placed a comforting hand on her arm. Holly nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She loved the photo, but it actually hurt her to look at it. So much had changed since it had been taken; so many people had been hurt and lied to. It broke Holly’s heart.
‘How did you know that Zakynthos was where you belonged?’ she asked Annie now, putting the photo face down on the bar and picking up her drink.
‘I didn’t, not at first.’ Annie sighed as she pulled up a stool, yelling something in Greek to the two youngsters who were running drinks from the bar to the tables. ‘I came over with my ex-husband – it was his idea to open this place, then of course he ran off with someone else. He cheated on me the whole time we were married.’
‘What a rotter,’ Holly said, trying not to choke on her own hypocrisy.
‘Indeed.’ Annie paused for a moment as she reminisced. ‘When he finally did the decent thing and actually buggered off back to Leeds, I was all ready to sell this place. I thought all the memories would be too painful to deal with.’
‘What changed your mind?’ Holly tried to picture a younger Annie, beaten down and broken by betrayal, trying to make sense of everything on her own in a foreign country. She seemed so strong and content now that it was a tough image to conjure up.
‘I took myself down to the beach one day. I had someone coming to look at the bar in the afternoon, and I just sat and watched the wate
r for hours. It was so beautiful, I simply realised I couldn’t leave it behind. And do you know what? I’ve never regretted it, not once.’
She was so lucky, thought Holly. If only she could have a eureka moment and know in her gut that she was in the right place, with the right person. She was her mother’s daughter all right – Jenny had been flaky and indecisive until the day she died, and apparently she’d passed those traits on to Holly.
‘What’s all this about?’ Annie asked. ‘You look like you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
Holly shook her head. ‘I don’t mind at all. I guess I’m just looking for answers. I wish someone could make all my decisions for me.’ As she said it, she was reminded of Rupert, ordering for her in restaurants, choosing her a dress, taking over in the estate agent’s when she was struggling to make herself understood, telling her exactly how their life would be together. It should feel like a comfort, to have someone that cared enough to take the reins.
‘Nobody can do that,’ Annie laughed, patting her on the knee. ‘My Derek used to try, and in the end it was the undoing of us. Well, that and all those other women he was ban— What?’
One of the young Greek waitresses had scurried up to them in a panic because a drink order had gone out wrong, and Annie made her apologies and went to smooth things over. Holly admired the way she got the complaining man laughing within a few seconds.
Downing the last of her wine and slipping the photo of Sandra and Aidan into her bag, Holly heaved herself off the stool and headed for home. It wasn’t until she was safely in bed that she switched on her phone and let the light from the screen cast a dull glow across the room. Huddled under the only clean and dry sheet that she had left in the house, she clutched her mum and aunt’s secret map in her hands and traced a finger over their words. If only someone could draw her a map that would guide her to happiness. If only she could take out a compass and follow a route that would lead her to where she was supposed to be. Was it really her path to turn her back on this place and make a life in London with Rupert? And if so, then why did it feel as if something here, on this island, was holding her back?
My Map of You Page 24
