‘What? Why?’ She was doing her best to remain calm, but the intensity in his eyes was scaring her.
‘It’s …’ He paused. For a few seconds he stared down at the floor, at the pile of postcards, and then he looked right at her.
‘It’s your dad. He’s had a heart attack. You need to come now.’
He was already up on his feet again, but Holly found she couldn’t move.
‘What the hell do you mean?’ she snapped, finding her voice. ‘I only found out who my dad was myself a few minutes ago.’
‘Holly.’ Aidan gripped the door handle. ‘Trust me, we have to go. There’s no time for a discussion about it.’
When she didn’t move, he reached down and grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her up on to her feet.
‘Come on, I’ll drive you.’
‘Get off!’ She yanked her hand away as if he’d branded it. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’ The urge to cry again was almost overwhelming, but she was determined not to let Aidan see her weak side ever again.
He took a deep breath and glared at her. She was still holding the letter Sandra had written and her face was a mess of red blotches and smudged mascara.
‘Holly,’ he said again, moving as close to her as he dared. ‘You have to come and see Dennis. I don’t want it to be too late.’
Dennis? So, Aidan knew who her dad was. Too stunned by this information to reply and too exhausted to put up any more of a fight, Holly let him lead her down the stairs and out to his jeep.
26
Aidan drove dangerously fast all the way to the hospital, narrowly avoiding clusters of tourists and parked cars. Holly sat mutely beside him, wincing every now and then at the near misses but refusing to say a word – she didn’t trust herself to say anything, such was her confusion and anger. The same thought was repeating itself over and over in her mind: My father is Sandra’s ex, Dennis. He is in hospital. Aidan knows who he is.
But how did Aidan know? Had he found the letter before her and worked it out? Had he known all along? And if so, why the hell hadn’t he told her?
Even after the arrival of Clara and the horrible way he’d been behaving towards her ever since, Holly still refused to believe that he was capable of keeping such a big secret from her. She trusted him. He was one of the only people she’d ever really trusted. He couldn’t and wouldn’t have done that to her, would he?
Zakynthos hospital turned out to be a large rectangular building, with a yellow and terracotta paint job that did little to detract from its bulky, blocky ugliness. Holly’s first thought as Aidan screeched to a halt across two parking spaces was relief that he hadn’t actually crashed the jeep on the way. This didn’t look like the sort of place where you’d want to end up after an accident.
While the inside was clean enough, the grey plastic chairs in the downstairs waiting room looked faded and the green walls dull, as if the sunlight had long ago robbed them of any vibrancy. Aidan was babbling away in Greek to the woman behind the reception desk, and soon he was leading Holly towards a wide bank of stairs.
He’d barely looked at her since they left the house, but Holly could tell that he was concerned. A muscle twitched continually in his cheek and his hair was sticking up in all directions where he kept running an agitated hand through it. Dark patches had also formed under his arms and in the groove of his back, lending an almost tie-dye effect to his goat-eaten T-shirt. Holly noticed all this, but couldn’t really process it. The notion that she might soon see her real father in the flesh for the first time had stolen away all rational thinking and replaced it with an intense dread.
‘Aidan.’
A dark-haired woman was rushing down the corridor towards them, fresh tears all over her face. She immediately began speaking in Greek, only pausing to look over his shoulder to where Holly was cowering, unsure of what to do. The woman was clearly distraught, and Aidan put his arms around her and forced her into a reluctant embrace.
‘He’s out of immediate danger,’ he said in English, turning to Holly. ‘They got here in time.’
She nodded, still mute. The woman pulled her face away from Aidan’s chest and stole another look at her. There was something in her eyes that Holly couldn’t quite place. Not mistrust, exactly, more like curiosity. After eyeing Holly up and down, she stepped back and beckoned to her and Aidan that they should follow her back along the green passageway. As they neared an open doorway, Holly noticed a young girl sitting on another sad-looking chair that had been left outside. She had a sullen expression on her face and was swinging her legs underneath the seat. As she looked up, Holly was hit with a punch of recognition. She’d seen this little face before, at the taverna above the beautiful cove in Porto Limnionas, but the first time it had been smiling and happy and covered in smears of chocolate ice cream.
‘This is Paloma,’ Aidan said, motioning towards the older woman. Holly remembered the name – Paloma was the lady who worked with him in the clinic. Up close, she looked a lot younger than her clothes and grey-streaked hair had led Holly to believe. She looked so much like the little girl sitting in the chair that she could only be her mother.
‘Yassou,’ she muttered, trying her best to smile.
Paloma looked her up and down again and sniffed, before saying something in Greek to Aidan. The little girl stopped swinging her legs and leaned around her mother to peer at Holly, her deep-set eyes wide beneath her dark fringe. Holly wondered if she too remembered that they had already met one another.
‘Paloma only found out about you a few weeks ago,’ Aidan said now. He still wasn’t quite meeting her eyes.
‘Well, tell her that I only found out about her a few moments ago,’ she snapped, finally finding her voice. ‘And that I don’t even know who she is, despite everyone else apparently knowing everything about me.’ She’d meant that last part to sting him, and it worked. Aidan flinched as if she’d slapped him.
‘I know this is hard for you,’ he started, but she held up her hand.
‘You don’t know me at all,’ she stated. ‘Don’t you dare presume to know how I’m feeling. Not now, not ever.’
‘Paloma is Dennis’ wife,’ he told her, ignoring the outburst. ‘And this is their daughter, Maria.’
The little girl, who was apparently her half-sister, braved a smile and Holly felt her anger subside a fraction. It was then that she realised, with an increasingly frantic hammering of her heart, that she had probably seen her dad before too – she’d seen him more than once. She couldn’t blame Aidan for the first of those encounters at Porto Limnionas, when Dennis had stared at her across the banks of tables and she’d assumed, ridiculously, that he was checking her out. But the second, when the two men had stood by the fishing boat in Mikro Nissi and watched her, was all on him. Just what the hell had he been playing at?
A doctor appeared just as the silence was becoming uncomfortable and ushered Paloma and Aidan inside, shutting the door behind them and leaving Holly in the putrid green corridor with Maria. For a few seconds, they just looked at each other, and then Maria began to cry. Her sobs were so loud and so heart-wrenching that Holly found herself kneeling down and taking her hands. Maria looked at her beseechingly and sobbed a few jumbled words at her in Greek. Her nose was running and there were two streaks of clean skin where her tears had made a path through the dirt on each of her cheeks. At a loss as to how to tell her that everything would be okay, Holly merely reached up and stroked the wet hair off her half-sister’s face. She had the same dark, slightly almond-shaped eyes as Holly.
Despite the fact that they were total strangers, Maria clutched Holly against her as if she was the most precious person in the world, and Holly hugged her right back just as tight. For a few minutes, as she knelt there on the cold floor, Holly stopped worrying about what was to come next. All that mattered was Maria, her very own sister. Now that she had her, Holly felt as if she was invincible. She was not alone in the world after all, and the realisation was both startling and magica
l. It was as if she’d made a wish and had it granted, without even knowing that she’d made one in the first place.
‘Holly?’
It was Aidan, his touch gentle on her shoulder.
‘Dennis is stable and you can see him if you want to.’
Maria had finally stopped crying, but Holly took her time disentangling herself from the little girl’s clinging arms. Aidan’s eyes were shining and he looked to Holly as if he’d aged five years in the last half an hour. His freckly skin bore a grey tinge and his shoulders were uncharacteristically hunched.
‘You look wretched,’ she told him matter-of-factly, giving Maria’s little hand a final squeeze before letting it drop. Paloma had joined them and was staring unashamedly at Holly again, her blatant curiosity as clear as the cloudless sky outside.
‘Shall we get this over with then?’ Holly said, addressing both of them.
‘Are you sure you’re ready?’ Aidan asked.
Was he insane?
‘No. I’m not sure,’ she replied, growing angry again. ‘But given as how you stormed into my house and ordered me down here, I don’t think I have a choice in the matter now, do I?’
He nodded, looking sheepish. Holly sneaked a last look down at Maria, and then followed Aidan into the room and towards the figure under the blankets.
27
When Holly was still a child and prone to making up all kinds of stories in her head, her favourite of all these make-believe tales was the one she’d conjured up about her father. In her fantasy, he was always tall and far more handsome than any of the other dads she’d met, with twinkly eyes, a huge cheesy grin and the best cuddles in the world. She would imagine him knocking on the front door after years spent in the foreign places that her mum had told her about, and she would answer it and gaze up at him in wonder. Then he would smile in his wonderful way and reach down to pick her up, telling her over and over again how much he’d missed her and how proud he was. It was a silly story, but Holly thought about it often as she grew up, willing it to be true even though she knew there was no likelihood of that. Her mum moved them around so much that even if her dad did want to track her down, he’d never be able to find them. She’d raised this point a few times when she was still young, but her mum had simply shaken her head and smiled. ‘He’ll find us if he wants to,’ she would say, leaving Holly to wonder why on earth he wouldn’t.
Perhaps it was this romanticised childhood fantasy that made Holly’s legs tremble with expectation when she finally saw her father, or maybe it was just the shock of everything that had come to light in the past few hours – but it was certainly nothing like she’d ever imagined. Dennis wasn’t smiling, for a start. His eyes were open and he was looking directly at her, but his face was contorted with misery and what looked to Holly like fear. She noticed the tears all over his face just as her own began to fall.
Dennis opened his mouth to speak, but he seemed too weak to manage it. He looked tormented, and Holly instinctively reached out to take his hand. It felt cold, and she shivered as he gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. He tried to speak again, but still she couldn’t make out what he was saying because his voice was so hoarse. The machine monitoring his heart rate was bleeping with reassuring regularity, and Holly found herself staring at a tiny red light that was flashing on and off.
‘He says that he is sorry,’ Paloma whispered beside her. She’d left her spot next to the door to join Holly by the bed, and was now gesturing that she should bend forward in order to hear what Dennis was saying. Aidan had moved to the window and had his back to them, his hand shaking ever so slightly as he brought it up to move the curtain aside. Holly closed her eyes as she leaned over towards Dennis. She wanted to block out Aidan. If she couldn’t see him, then she could pretend he wasn’t there at all. If she was being honest, she resented him for being there in the room with them, intruding into her life during such a moment.
‘Sorry,’ breathed Dennis again. It was barely a whisper.
Holly moved her hand up just in time to stop her tears from falling all over him, and a sob erupted from somewhere in the depths of her chest. Paloma put a hand in the small of her back and rubbed a warm circle. It was such an instinctively maternal thing to do that Holly was reminded horribly of her own mother again, and this set off a whole new flood of tears.
‘I’m sorry too,’ she managed at last, finally opening her eyes and looking down at the man on the pillows. ‘I’m so sorry.’
And she was sorry. Sorry that she was crying when he was the one in the hospital bed; sorry that she couldn’t articulate to him how she was feeling, about how happy she was to have found him; and sorry that they had met each other this way, so very long after they should have.
As her juddering sobs slowed and the room fell silent again, Paloma pushed her gently into the chair by the bed and backed quietly away. Holly felt rather than saw Aidan leave the room too, and for a long time after they left she just rested her forehead against the edge of the mattress, Dennis’ cold fingers stroking a timid pattern across her hand.
She wasn’t alone any more.
After spending an entire thirty-six hours at the hospital, a good portion of them in the grotty plastic chair outside Dennis’ room, Holly was finally persuaded by a concerned nurse to go home and get some sleep. But after four hours spent staring morosely at the ceiling, she admitted defeat at the hands of her old friend the Insomnia Troll and slipped noiselessly out through the front door, pushing her moped down the hill before she started the engine. She didn’t think Aidan would dare to show his face, but she didn’t want to risk bumping into him.
She still couldn’t believe he’d paraded Dennis in front of her and told her nothing. He’d listened while she poured her heart out about her mum, about how she’d spent so many years on her own, and still he’d said nothing. There was no possible way that she would be able to see him without saying something really awful, something that would undoubtedly sever the bond between them for ever. Despite his crimes, the thought of losing Aidan permanently still made Holly feel queasy. She knew she should hate him, but she had been reluctantly comforted during the hours he’d stayed with her at the hospital. But it was still all so hopeless. How could they ever go back to the way things had been just a few days ago? How could she ever trust him? It had taken her so many years to find someone she felt comfortable enough with to let her guard down, and that person had turned out to be lying to her all along. It just wasn’t fair.
She drove without really thinking and ended up heading towards Kalamaki, parking the bike by the beach and walking up to the viewing platform she’d noticed on her very first visit. It felt like a lifetime ago now. The sun was yet to rise, but a trail of blue-grey light was just visible on the horizon. Holly took her time climbing up the stony path towards the top of the cliff, where she was greeted by the full splendour of the moon. It seemed so much larger and brighter than it did back in London, but Holly found that she couldn’t fully appreciate its beauty. Her head was throbbing with fatigue and her back was sore from all the hours spent sitting on the hard plastic chair. After standing for a few minutes to absorb the view, she sat down on the dusty ground and dangled her feet over the side.
She had a father.
Everyone had a father, of course, but Holly had never had a living, breathing one before. Simon had been a kind of stepdad for the few years that he and Jenny had stayed together, but her mum had never encouraged her to refer to him as ‘Dad’, and certainly not to think of him as such. She was adamant that Holly’s dad was a hero, someone who had dedicated his life to trying to make the world a better place. Of course, the reality was that Holly’s real father was neither a hero nor a random drifter: he was just a man much like any other. A man who had made mistakes that had cost him dearly.
Holly peered down past her toes to where the waves were snaking their way up and across the sand.
‘I have a dad,’ she said aloud, waiting to feel absurd. It was all too real, though �
� too horribly, yet brilliantly, but still mind-screwingly real to laugh about. There was a knot in her stomach like a tightly wound ball of barbed wire. She could feel it now – it felt like it was slowly tearing her insides to pieces.
How could Aidan have just stood there that day at the beach when he knew her father was merely metres away?
Holly stopped staring at the ground and looked up in time to see a thick wedge of sunlight slide across the surface of the sea. For a while, she simply sat and stared at the twinkling crests of the waves through half-closed eyes.
Dennis had been fairly groggy for the first few hours that she spent in his room, but he’d still found the strength to take her hand in his. She’d watched, as if in a daze, as he’d squeezed it gently with his own, his thumb rotating against her wrist. It was as if he was trying to say in a gesture what he was unable to put into words. Holly had just stared at him mutely, trying her very best not to cry again. When she finally found the courage to meet his eyes, he had smiled, and she had felt some of the pain fall away. There were so many questions she wanted him to answer, but she understood that for now they could wait.
The truth, her truth, the one that she’d been searching for since she arrived in Zakynthos, suddenly scared her. Holly wasn’t sure if she was ready to hear the full story of exactly what had happened all those years ago – especially if it meant she would end up back where she’d started: hating her mum. Was there even more left for her to forgive? Holly felt sure that there was, and she didn’t have the strength to face it.
‘Penny for them?’
She was lost so deep in her own thoughts that she hadn’t heard Aidan coming up the cliff behind her and she swung round in alarm, sending a shoal of stones over the ledge.
Aidan lunged forward to grab her, but she slapped his hands away.
‘Don’t touch me.’
‘Holly …’ he began, but stopped when he saw the look on her face. ‘Can I sit down?’
My Map of You Page 26
