‘I do not think she did. You were the only person that she really loved. She never even looked at her own sister like she looked at you. I saw the love in her eyes, and it was beautiful.’ He smiled at Holly. ‘Whatever happened to your mother in the end, when demons stole her away from you, she did love you more than the world itself. This is the truth.’
A few months ago, Holly would have scoffed at his comments and snapped that her mum hadn’t cared a dot about her, but now she simply nodded. She had been loved. That love had been lost along the way somehow, but it had been there, and it had been the real thing.
‘Then what happened?’ she asked, bracing herself for what she knew was a murky end.
‘Sandra told me to go and she told Jennifer to go. I kept going back every day, but she would not see me. Even when she looked at me, it was as if I was not there. She looked through me like I was made of glass. In the end,’ he shrugged, ‘it became very difficult for me. I told her that she could have the house and I sold my restaurant. My sister had married a man from Kefalonia and he was keen to start a new business. I left at the end of the summer.’
‘And my mum?’ Holly prompted.
Dennis lifted up his hands. ‘She was gone the day after the fight. She took all her stuff in one bag and she took you and she left. I told myself that it was for the best, but I should have tried to find you. I did not want to believe it. I am sorry for that now.’
His eyes were moist and he looked grey with fatigue. Holly had never been comfortable with affection, but something made her kneel down in front of him on the deck and wrap her arms around his shoulders. He felt reassuringly solid and warm, and she closed her eyes for a few seconds to enjoy the sensation of him.
‘It is all in the past,’ she said at last, pulling back and looking into his eyes, the same eyes she gazed at every time she looked in the mirror. ‘We cannot change what has happened, nobody can.’
‘I am glad that I have found you now,’ he told her, bringing a weathered hand up to touch her cheek.
‘It was Sandra that found me,’ she reminded him. ‘I think she thought that if we were reunited then it would mend some of the wrongs. I know she wanted to forgive my mother and see me, but she loved you so much that she never could. She must have died with such sadness inside her.’
As she said it, Holly thought painfully of Aidan, who’d been trusted with Sandra’s secrets and been made to promise that he would ensure Holly and Dennis were brought back together. It must have been a difficult choice to make, she realised, and wondered then if she wouldn’t have made exactly the same decision as he had. What was it he’d said to her on that final morning above the beach in Kalamaki? That he hadn’t planned to fall for her? Just like Dennis hadn’t planned to cheat on Sandra, and Jenny hadn’t planned to have a child, and Sandra hadn’t known that she was going to lose everyone she had ever loved. What a mess they had all made, but none of it with malice.
‘I think she would be happy for us today,’ Holly said, turning away from him to gaze once again at the ocean. ‘I think my mother would be happy today too.’
Dennis did not reply, but instead placed a warm hand on her shoulder. For a long time, they sat watching the waves, the fisherman and his daughter, content just to be with one another in a place that they loved.
34
The wind had picked up during the afternoon and stirred the sea into a swirling lather of activity. The waves crashed noisily against the shoreline, their white frothy tips racing heedless across the sand.
Holly watched from her spot behind the wooden fence along the cliff edge, momentarily mesmerised by the majestic display of nature that was unfolding in front of her. Back in May, the sea had been so much calmer and flatter, but there was something about the unashamed wildness of it now that she liked. The sea, she mused, like so much about herself, could not be tamed. She thought about this as the waves continued to thrash and scurry below her.
The graveyard was situated not far from Volimes, the very same place that Aidan had brought her for breakfast the first day they spent together. Clearly it had been a place that meant a lot to Sandra, as not only was it marked firmly on the hand-drawn map in Holly’s hand, but it was also where she’d wanted to be buried. Annie had told her about it on the drive up here, taking her hand off the taped-up gearstick every now and then to grasp Holly’s fingers. Nobody had mentioned Sandra’s grave when she had first come to the island back in May, and she hadn’t wanted to ask. At that stage her aunt had still felt very much like a stranger, and Holly would have felt awkward bringing flowers up here. Now, however, her aunt was almost as alive in her mind as her mother. Holly felt she understood the two of them so much better, and so it was finally the right time to pay her respects.
Annie had dropped Holly off at the gates and taken herself off into Volimes for coffee, not wanting to intrude on the moment. She’d been such a support over the past few weeks, ever since Holly had called her from London and told her everything – the truth about her parents and Sandra, about the house and, in not such explicit terms, Aidan and Rupert. It was finally getting an offer on the house that had done it. As soon as she’d opened that email from the estate agent informing her that someone wanted to buy Sandra’s house, her house, she knew in her gut and in her heart that she could never sell it. It was her home. The home of her family.
So much had happened in such a short time – this place had changed her, made her realise who she was, what she loved and what really mattered. She finally understood why Sandra had chosen to stay here, despite everything that had gone wrong and all the lingering heartbreak that she’d endured. It was this place that she really loved, in the end. It was this island that had turned out to be her soulmate. Holly only knew this now because her own heart had shifted – she was as hopelessly in love with Zakynthos as she ever had been with anything, and being here made her feel as if she might even start to love herself one day too.
For all those weeks in London, the thought of coming back to the island had filled her with trepidation. There was so much here that she hadn’t felt ready to face, but as she stood here now, the busy pattern of the waves lulling her into a contented trance, she couldn’t believe she had stayed away so long.
Reaching into her bag just as a brisk gust of wind whipped her hair across her face, Holly pulled out the letter she’d written on the flight over. She had planned to just prop it up against Sandra’s headstone and leave, but now that she was here, it didn’t seem like enough of a gesture. She wanted the words to take flight on the wind, so they could scurry and somersault their way to wherever Sandra and Jenny were now. Holly knew that if they each had a choice, then those words would not have far to travel.
Glancing around one final time to make sure she was alone, Holly sat cross-legged on the earth beside the stone bearing the name ‘Sandra Mary Wright’ and started to read aloud.
‘Dear Sandra and Jenny,’ she began, her voice already cracking slightly as she said her mum’s name. ‘I wanted to write you both a letter to say thank you. Thank you for finding this place and for falling in love with it, and for leading me back here all these years later.’
There was a pause as Holly pulled herself together and a small brown bird landed on the top bar of the fence above her head. Peering down at her, it cocked its tiny head to one side as if to say, ‘Do continue.’
‘I know that you both did things to hurt each other,’ she went on. ‘And I wish more than anything that you had been able to overcome those issues before it was too late. But I’ve also learnt that you can’t live your life looking backwards – the only way to move on is to accept the past and take the lesson it offers, not spend years dwelling over what could have been.’
The next part was going to be tough, and Holly failed to stop her voice from collapsing into sobs.
‘Mum. I forgive you. I’m sorry it took me so long …’
The bird flew down and sat on the top of the headstone, clearly bewildered by this strange
English girl sitting crying in the dirt. There was something very comforting about the way it was watching her, as if it knew she needed some company and a bit of support to get through this. Holly struggled on.
‘I want you to know that I miss you every day. I always have, even if I pretended not to. And I love you, so very much. I’m sorry that you went through such heartache.’ And she was sorry, so very sorry. Now that she was getting the chance at a better life, it felt even more unfair that Jenny had never had it.
‘Sandra,’ she began. ‘I forgive you too. I figured that someone needed to forgive both of you, because you never forgave each other. Well, perhaps you did, but you never forgave yourselves. A good friend of mine told me off once for being too hard on myself, and I know where I get that from. I want to make a promise to you both now that I will try not to be so tough on myself any more. The three of us, we are all only human and we made mistakes. I’ll probably make lots more, but I will never let them devour me in the way that you did. I promise you that.’
The bird had now hopped down to the ground and was so close to Holly that she could see the delicate pattern on its wings. As she wiped her eyes on the back of her hand, it let out a shrill and impatient chirp.
‘I hope that you’re together now,’ Holly said, no longer reading from the letter but staring out towards the sea. ‘I hope you both found your way home, to each other. It feels to me as if you did, and I want you to know that it comforts me. We are all here together now, on this island. It’s where we belong.’
Dusting herself off as she stood up, Holly turned just as a wide shaft of sunlight slipped out from the clouds and shone directly across Sandra’s grave. The flowers Holly had laid there were the same ones Aidan had left for her before they’d even met – pink and bright and unashamedly happy – and they looked vibrant in the light. Reaching over, she placed her small hand on the warm stone, smiled, and then turned and made her way back down towards the gates.
The little bird waited until she was out of sight before opening its wings and taking flight. It hovered above the grave for a few seconds, as it did every single day, then took off into the blue.
The house was in darkness as Holly made her way quietly along the path. She’d left the place in a hurry back in May, but had still remembered to leave the spare key underneath the pot. She had deliberately avoided looking over to where Aidan’s house lurked in the fading light, but she knew he wasn’t there because his jeep was missing from its usual place on the road.
There were no flowers in a vase on the table this time, and a thin layer of dust was clinging to the wooden arms of the sofa. The fridge offered nothing more exciting than a half-empty bottle of water and some very questionable cheese, but Holly immediately felt at ease. It was such a contrast to how she’d felt the first time she’d crossed the threshold, when the house presented itself as a sad mausoleum of unwanted trinkets and hidden secrets.
Now that she knew she’d spent years playing here as a child, Holly examined the downstairs space through new eyes, searching the walls and floors for anything that might trigger a memory or a feeling. She remembered how crazed she’d been on her first visit, how she’d turned the place upside down, rifling through drawers and into the back of cupboards. Of course, it had all been fruitless in the beginning, because Aidan was in possession of most of the physical clues to her past. He couldn’t have known then that it was her instincts, in the end, which led her in the right directions. Those feelings of déjà vu that she could never quite shrug off, the way that her real self came boldly to the surface when she’d buried it so deeply and so painstakingly. There was no escaping what was true and what was right.
After investigating the upstairs rooms and finding nothing altered, Holly poured herself a glass of the village wine she’d picked up from Kostas on her way up the hill – along with a hug so tight she was afraid her ribs might crack – and plonked herself down on the sofa.
‘What the hell?’ Wine splattered out of her mouth and landed on the floor.
There was something different in the house – something that made the glass Holly was holding shake as she took it in.
As she stood up on unsteady legs to take a better look, there was a knock at the front door.
35
Holly and Aidan stared at each other. The summer months had added a coppery tinge to his black curls, which seemed to glow under the overhead light. There was an untidy spread of stubble across his jaw and a tangle of faint lines laced their way from the corner of his eyes out towards his temples. As she stood, rooted to the spot, Holly was aware of his scent assailing her senses. It was a strange yet still alluring mixture of man-sweat, dog hair and coconut sun lotion.
‘Hi.’
As he said it, Holly realised that she’d been staring at his mouth, and quickly looked away. The silence hung in the air between them like a wet shower curtain, and she was horribly conscious of her heart smashing away inside her chest.
‘Hello,’ she replied, coughing to mask the squeak that came out.
‘It’s nice to see you,’ he tried, a half-smile starting to lift one corner of his mouth. ‘You look well.’
She didn’t return the compliment, but lifted a hand to bat his away. She may not smell of BO and dog, but she did have dried patches of dust all over her legs and she was pretty sure her hair looked like something you’d find in an English country field the day after a good harvest.
‘I spoke to Clara,’ he continued, leaning against the doorframe as it became apparent she wasn’t going to invite him inside. ‘She told me what you’ve been up to, with your clothes designing and all that – it sounds great.’
She must have pulled a face at this, because he frowned at her.
‘Okay, so it’s better than great. It’s fecking brilliant. I thought my heart was going to burst with pride when I heard and—’
‘Enough.’ Holly held a hand up again. She was finding it very hard to meet his eyes.
‘How’s the puppy?’ she asked, steering the conversation on to safer ground.
‘Lexi?’ Aidan seemed momentarily surprised. ‘She’s well. Spends most of her time down at Annie’s – she loves it down in the bar. She’s become a regular little tourist attraction, the flirty wee madam.’
Holly thought of the little dog’s lopsided ears and patchwork coat.
‘I can imagine,’ she said, smiling for the first time.
‘I left Phelan at home,’ Aidan told her. ‘Thought it would be easier to talk if you didn’t have a dog’s nose stuffed in your crotch.’
Holly blushed at his casual mention of her crotch. Feeling suddenly exposed under his relentless gaze, she squirmed uncomfortably, unable to stop thinking about what she’d just seen on the wall behind them.
‘Why did you bother to knock?’ she asked him now. ‘Clearly you still have a key.’
Aidan shook his head. ‘No. I used the one you left under the pot.’
Feeling stupid, Holly finally dropped her arm and took a step back into the house. Aidan, taking this as his cue to follow her, stepped over the threshold carefully, as if there were smouldering embers on the cold floor tiles.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, his words hitting Holly in the back like a thump. She ignored him, crossing instead to the sofa and retrieving her glass of wine. She didn’t offer him any.
‘When did you make it?’ she asked, taking a gulp to mask the tremble in her voice.
‘Not long after you left,’ he replied. He had stepped across to join her and the two of them stood side by side, looking at the large, framed map on the wall. It was a cheap foldout one of the island, the kind which Kostas sold for two euros down in the shop, but this one had been annotated with notes and covered with drawings. Aidan had labelled the area where they’d gone to drink coffee in Volimes and the path down to Jenny and Sandra’s secret beach. He’d scribbled a note about the market stall where she’d bought her first swathe of lace and doodled church bells next to it. The bakery where
they’d picked up the delicious spanakopita was there too, along with lots of very bad drawings of goats all over the place. Up in the north of the island, he’d crudely drawn bottles of beer next to Mikro Nissi and there was a large happy face at Navagio, where he’d shown her the infamous Shipwreck Cove.
As Holly let her eyes stray round to Lithakia, she saw that Aidan had added a photo of her house alongside one of himself and her Aunt Sandra that she’d never seen before. At the highest point of the island, he’d cheekily stuck a photo of Big Ben, and round at the Blue Caves he’d sketched a large sea turtle. Holly blushed as her eyes found Keri – Aidan had stuck on a handful of those glow-in-the-dark stars and simply scribbled beside them the words ‘when I knew’.
Holly stepped forward and gestured to the photo of Aidan and Sandra. Similarly to the one she’d pinched from Annie’s bar, the two of them looked as if they had just been laughing.
‘Phelan was getting chased by a bee,’ Aidan said. Holly didn’t turn to look at him, but she could hear the smile in his voice. ‘He was spinning round in circles like a mad thing. Annie took the photo,’ he added. ‘It turned out to be Sandy’s last summer.’
‘She looks happy,’ Holly said, ignoring the faint prickle of tears. ‘I’m glad she was happy in the end, after everything that happened.’
‘She always had a sadness about her,’ he admitted. ‘Sometimes when she laughed – like, really, really laughed – I’d notice her catch herself and then she’d act all guilty, as if laughter wasn’t something she deserved. When she told me about what had happened with you and with her sister, it all made sense. But yes, I think she was as happy as she allowed herself to be. I think in the end, you can’t let the grief take over, you have to move it to one side before it eats you up and spits you out.’
Holly nodded. She was still staring at the map – on the label next to the secret beach where they’d discovered Sandra and Jenny’s engraving in the cave, which Aidan had defiantly named ‘our beach’, he’d drawn a big red heart in biro. Unable to quite take in what she was seeing, Holly sat back down on the sofa and reached again for her glass. Aidan remained standing, staring resolutely at his feet as he continued talking.
My Map of You Page 33
