She shrugged.
It was difficult for someone of Aidan’s size to shrink into a small, unobtrusive ball, but somehow he managed it as he slid down and sat hunched on the platform. He had a large scab on his knee and she could see marks on his ankles from the socks he must have recently discarded. He was careful not to go within touching distance of Holly, which was wise, given that she was seriously contemplating hurling him over the side on to the wet sand below.
‘How did you know where I was?’ she asked him after a time. She’d been so careful to leave the house without making a sound.
‘I followed you.’ He risked a half-smile. ‘I was sitting at my window waiting for you to get up. I figured you wouldn’t stay cooped up in the house for very long.’
‘What makes you think I want you here?’ she asked, not bothering to keep the venom out of her voice. She wasn’t about to make this easy for him.
‘I didn’t think you would. I just thought someone should keep an eye on you. You’ve had a big shock.’
‘No thanks to you.’
‘Yes, no thanks to me. Maybe that’s why I feel responsible.’
There was a long pause as Holly seethed and Aidan gazed out towards the dark shapes of the mountains. He looked genuinely upset, but this only made her even angrier.
‘This doesn’t change anything,’ she told him. ‘I’m still going to sell the house.’
Aidan raised his shoulders and let them drop again. Holly knew he was only pretending not to care – there was a bead of sweat working its way down the side of his face.
His silence was starting to grate.
‘Don’t you have anything to say to me?’ she demanded. Her bottom was going rapidly numb on the hard, stony ground and she shifted irritably.
Aidan looked up at her, waiting until she finally met his eyes before he replied. ‘I had no choice. I made a promise. Sandy made me prom—’
‘Promise what? To sneak me off to see my dad and then not even tell me who he was? To stand by and say nothing when I poured my bloody heart out to you? To stare at a photo of my father and pretend you had no idea who he was?’
Aidan shrugged again and Holly picked up one of the small stones and threw it at him.
‘Don’t just sit there and shrug your shoulders at me! I trusted you.’ Her voice cracked as she yelled at him. She had trusted him – she hadn’t trusted anyone for so many years and she’d let her guard down with him – and he’d thrown it all back in her face.
‘Holly, please,’ Aidan looked as though he might actually cry. ‘Try to understand—’
‘No, Aidan. I don’t want to understand how someone could do what you’ve done to me. How someone could lie and cheat and—’ She stopped, realising with a fresh stab of guilt that she too had lied and cheated. She was no better than him.
‘I never set out to hurt you,’ Aidan said. Holly felt as if someone had taken an ice-cream scoop to her insides and scraped them all out.
‘Sandra was dying. She was my friend and I owed her – how could I say no? I thought it would just be hiding a few things round the house for you to find and pointing you in the right directions …’
‘What did you just say?’ Holly glared at him. ‘You hid things in my house?’
‘The map,’ Aidan shrugged uncomfortably. ‘Sandra gave it to me not long before … Well, you know.’
Holly clenched her fists and said nothing. She had felt such a surge of excitement when she found that tatty old bit of paper containing so many amazing secrets. It had felt like fate. But no, it had just been Aidan, playing a game with her all along.
‘What else?’ she demanded, watching as he visibly shrivelled under the weight of her stare.
‘The photo,’ he said quietly. ‘The one of Dennis and Sandra and Socrates and your mum and—’
‘I know who’s in it,’ she interrupted, ignoring his wince of discomfort.
‘Listen, Holly, I had no idea all this was going to happen. I didn’t know how much you’d already been through with your mum dying the way she did. And then I started falling for you and it just became even more difficult to tell you the truth. I was a coward. I wanted that bubble we were in to stay intact. I knew if I told you what I’d done then I would lose you.’
‘Shut up! Just shut up!’ She glared at him. ‘Don’t you dare say that to me. Don’t you dare try to mask what you’ve done with some flimsy excuse for real feelings. If you cared about me even the tiniest bit, then you never would have let this happen.’
Aidan held up a hand. ‘You know I care about you,’ he told her. ‘You’re the one who ditched me the minute your boyfriend turned up.’
‘Don’t bring him into it,’ Holly snapped. ‘He’s a million times the man you’ll ever be.’
‘Clearly.’ Aidan was getting riled now. There was a vein pulsing on his temple and his face had turned an ugly shade of puce.
‘And you can talk about going off with other people,’ she added, thinking excruciatingly of the long-limbed and Titian-haired Clara.
Aidan opened his mouth to retort and then shut it again. They sat in silence for a few seconds, both distracted by the rising sun that had sneaked up behind them. Despite her temper, Holly felt her eyes widen to drink in the view.
‘Sandy thought it would all be too much for you, if you turned up and were confronted by a father on the very first day,’ Aidan told her. ‘She asked me to wait until the time was right. But then Dennis had the heart attack and … well, everything just got so confused.’
‘Confused?’ Holly laughed shortly. ‘What was there to be confused about? You knew who my dad was and you didn’t tell me. Seems pretty clear to me. What if the heart attack had killed him? Would you just never have told me about him?’
‘Of course not.’ Aidan put his head in his hands. ‘But nobody could have predicted what happened to Dennis.’
‘Exactly!’ Holly was yelling again. ‘That’s exactly my point. It could have happened at any time. You should have told me about him as soon as I got here, you know you should.’
‘I was just trying to do the right thing by everyone.’ Aidan’s voice had become very small. ‘By you, and Dennis and Sandy. Dennis was never sure that you were even his daughter until he saw you that day at his restaurant.’
‘What do you mean? Oh, he owns the place at Porto Limnionas?’
Aidan nodded. ‘He moved back here not long after my mother left. Paloma started working with me at the clinic and we all became friends. It was only when I happened to mention him to Sandra one day that it all came out. She was petrified at the idea of seeing him. She made me promise never to tell him that she was still on the island, and now I have to live with that too.’
Holly let this new information sink in. Dennis had been here at the same time as Sandra, but the two had never seen each other. It was heartbreaking and so, so, stupid.
‘So, Dennis didn’t know until recently that you even knew Sandra?’ Holly asked him now. Her mind was whirling all these new nuggets of information round like a gooey cake mixture as she tried to make sense of what she was hearing.
‘No,’ Aidan shook his head. There was a slant of sunlight across his face and Holly could see grey hairs intermingled with the black in his sideburns. ‘I didn’t know the full extent of what had happened between them until … Well, until Sandra was very frail. After she died, I asked Dennis to meet me and I told him everything – I warned him that you could arrive at any time,’ he added. ‘Sandra only told me about you right at the end.’
Holly stayed silent and waited for him to continue.
‘As soon as you arrived on the island, I drove straight over to Porto Limnionas and told Dennis you were here, and that I would bring you to see him when the time was right. But then you went and found your own way there. He recognised you straight away, of course. You look so much like him.’
‘Why didn’t he say something?’ Holly wasn’t even sure if Aidan knew the answer to that question, but saying it out
loud made her feel better.
‘I don’t know.’ Aidan picked up a pebble and turned it over in his big hands. ‘I guess he was just freaked out. It would have scared you if he had, anyway. Some random hairy Greek man bowling over and telling you he was your long-lost daddy.’
This was probably true, but Holly glared at him all the same.
‘And why are you such an expert of when the time is right all of a sudden?’ she asked quietly. ‘Who made you God?’
At this, Aidan sighed. Holly could tell he was losing his temper with her, but she had no intention of backing down. The rage she’d struggled to control for the past decade was dangerously close to the surface.
‘Holly,’ he went to reach across and touch her but then thought better of it. ‘You told me how confused you were. I knew you were still hurting so badly about your mum’s death. I didn’t think you were strong enough to have everything else dumped in your lap. Finding out about Sandra was shocking enough, let alone suddenly gaining a dad.’
He trailed off as he saw her expression.
‘You arrogant arse. You had no right to decide when I should find out about my father. I don’t need some scruffy Irish idiot making my decisions for me. I’m not some damaged little puppy that needs rescuing.’
‘That’s exactly what you are,’ Aidan interrupted, his tone decidedly cold. ‘Be honest, Holly. You couldn’t wait to tell me your sob story. You wanted me to look after you. You just reel people in, then push them away. You let me believe that we had a real connection – something I haven’t felt about anyone for a very long time – but then you went running back to your boyfriend. It was like I didn’t exist any more.’
He had stung her now, and Holly felt a mixture of anger and horrible misery bubbling like acid in the back of her throat. Why was he trying to make her feel bad about Rupert when all he’d done was run back to Clara? Her head was hurting with the effort of trying to piece everything together and she felt on the brink of letting her emotions flood out of her in a torrent. It was just too much. It was all too much.
‘I trusted you,’ she said, getting to her feet.
She looked down at Aidan for the final time. ‘You were the first person I trusted in a very long time,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d found someone who really understood me, but I was being ridiculous and stupid – I see that now.’
‘Don’t run away.’ Aidan had taken her hand. There was an edge of panic to his voice as he clutched her. ‘Your family is here. You belong here.’
‘How could I ever belong in a place where you are?’ she asked, removing her fingers from his grip one by one. ‘I don’t belong anywhere. I never have and I probably never will. It’s time for me to stop thinking that the grass is greener, because it isn’t. It really isn’t.’
He didn’t try to follow her as she made her way back down the path and along the beach. Up ahead, she could see the taverna shutters swinging open and the first keen sunbathers laying their towels out across the sand. She kept waiting for the tears to fall, but none came. She knew what she had to do now, and she had to do it today.
28
Two months later …
After an unseasonably wet May, the sunshine had arrived in London. The grey clouds had furled apart like spring blossom and gradually shed the last of their rain, and by July the earth in the parks was hard and cracked. To the north of the city, in Camden, the surface of the canal was a deep, impenetrable blue – a perfect reflection of the clear canvas directly above – and the local geese bobbed gently on the surface, their warning squawks silenced by the calm of another flawless morning.
Holly picked her way over the discarded kebab wrappers and beer bottles on the canal path, smiling a greeting to the street cleaner as she passed. He had attached a portable radio to the side of his cart, alongside the brooms and spare rubbish sacks, and was humming along to a Bob Marley song as he went about his business. As she reached the bridge by the main set of locks, Holly felt her pumps slip slightly on the wet decking. The ground was sprayed clean every morning before the market traders set up their stalls, and there was a curtain of condensation floating in the air above the sodden cobbles.
This was Holly’s favourite time of day at the market, and she found herself rising earlier each morning in her eagerness to get here. As long as she registered by 8.15 a.m. at the latest and paid her daily fee, she had a guaranteed stall spot until 7 p.m. She and Ivy had agreed to take it in turns to set up their stall, but Holly preferred to be here in plenty of time. There was something soothingly methodical about getting everything ready, and as she worked she would feel her brain begin to wake, layer by layer. A few metres from her own stall, there was a little place selling Greek coffee, and she liked to order a frappé and take it up on the narrow cobbled bridge over the canal to drink, watching the light on the water and letting herself settle into the day. Once the market started to fill up, which it tended to very quickly, the time seemed to fly past, and these few morning hours had become all the more precious as a result.
Holly was particularly excited on this bright Saturday morning because she had a big case of new stock that she’d finished off last night. Annie had stuck to her word and was still sending Holly large parcels of local Zakynthian lace, refusing to take anything except expenses from her friend back in the UK. It would have made Sandra happy, she told Holly, to see her niece creating such lovely things in the same way that she had once done. Holly had responded by spending every spare minute creating the garments that she planned to sell.
Once the stall was up and running, it hadn’t taken long for word of her unique and delicately beautiful clothing to spread, and her five rails of creations were now selling out as fast as she could replenish them. Rupert’s flat resembled a material bomb site most evenings, but he didn’t seem to mind. On the rare evenings that he didn’t have after-work drinks to attend, Holly would pack everything away into boxes and cook them dinner. Rupert adored being spoilt by her and coming home to a meal waiting on the table, and she was willing to do anything to make him happy.
Resigning from her job at Flash had been much easier than she’d thought. Her boss, Fiona the Dragon, had been surprisingly understanding and non-dragon-like, shortening her six-week notice period to two weeks, and had even promised to put Holly in touch with some of the designers that featured small collections on the website. Aliana, on the other hand, had been less delighted to see her desk buddy leave, but was somewhat comforted by Holly’s promise that she would be setting up down the road in Camden Market, meaning the pair could still spend every lunch time together as they always had. Holly found herself looking forward to the middle part of each weekday, when her friend would push her way through the market crowds and entertain her with office gossip and ongoing tales of her current dating disasters.
Three weeks after starting out on her own, Holly met Ivy, who’d set up a jewellery stand on the stall right next to her. They hit it off straight away, with the slightly older Ivy going into ecstasies over Holly’s stunning lace creations. Her own stuff was a mixture of handmade and vintage, and they soon discovered that Holly’s clothing and Ivy’s jewellery looked even better together than they did as stand-alone pieces. The next step was so obvious and so simple that they barely even discussed it. Holly & Ivy had been born shortly afterwards, and they hadn’t looked back since.
Just like Holly’s mum, Ivy had done a lot of travelling in her time, and Holly was reminded of how Jenny used to be in the years before her drinking took over. Now that she’d managed to let go of some of the bitterness she’d carried around with her for so long, Holly found that she could remember much more about her mum – and that it wasn’t all tinged with sadness or resentment. The darkness that had hung like stained tarpaulin over her memories had lifted, and when she thought about her mum now, it wasn’t followed by an automatic stab of pain or anger. For the first time since Jenny’s death and those awful, dark months that followed, Holly was allowing herself to smile at those memorie
s and feel affection towards her mother. It was a big step.
As she stood staring down into the canal, a lone drake paddled out from underneath the bridge below her, his green plumage emerald bright in the sunshine. Holly took a deep breath and swigged the last of her frappé. Sometimes the enormity of how much her life had transformed took her breath away. Just a couple of months ago, she had been lost, and now she felt as if she was on a path she’d chosen for herself. London didn’t stir her senses and make her heart sing in the same way as Zakynthos, but she kept stubbornly reminding herself that she had everything she needed here in London. Well, whispered a voice from somewhere deep inside her, almost everything.
Ivy was doing a roaring trade this morning, mostly thanks to the haul of jewellery and trinkets that she’d picked up at an antique fair in the South of France the previous weekend.
‘Who is this?’ Holly asked when they finally reached a lull, picking up a pendant. The oval-shaped photo hanging off it was of a young man, the sepia tint and mildly ludicrous facial hair he was sporting hinting at age.
‘I have no idea,’ Ivy shrugged. ‘I bought a whole batch of them. The Madame told me that they were made from an old photo of a French rugby team.’
‘I think we should name them!’ Holly declared, peering in turn at the ten or so other necklaces from the same set. ‘This one can be Philippe.’
‘And I’m going to name this one Bernard,’ Ivy laughed, selecting by far the most handsome of the bunch.
‘Oi! Are you ogling other men behind my back?’
It was Rupert, his hair wet from the gym and a sports bag slung across his shoulder. Ever since he’d lost Holly to her stall at weekends, her boyfriend had become a regular at the posh squash club in nearby Primrose Hill. He looked rugged, flushed and handsome, and Holly told him so, accepting his offer of coffee and cake with a grin.
‘Your boyfriend is such a darling,’ Ivy said, watching as Rupert made his way through the melee of tourists clustered around the food stalls.
My Map of You Page 27
