My Map of You (30 page)

‘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.

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 memories 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.

‘He is.' Holly nodded.

Things between the two of them had been good since she'd returned from Zakynthos, but she still carried around a residue of guilt about what she'd got up to behind his back. She told herself that she'd been a different person then, and that her dalliance with Aidan had happened during a moment of madness when her world felt as if it was caving in around her. Nothing good could come from him finding out – and anyway, she reminded herself, Aidan was as much ancient history as the French rugby players swinging off the end of Ivy's pendants.

She'd made a promise to herself that final morning on the island that she was going to make a go of things with
Rupert. She knew what her future would be like with him – it would be safe and predictable and she would never end up like her mother had: alone, depressed and riddled with regrets. Once she'd shoved any lingering thoughts about Zakynthos to the back of her mind, Holly had thrown herself into the Rupert project with an enthusiasm that even he seemed to find surprising. Within the first few days of returning to London, she'd given notice on her flat, and two weeks later she arrived on his doorstep with her modest possessions all packed into boxes and bags. Her only extravagance had been a brand-new sewing machine, although she still found herself missing the creaky old one she'd been forced to leave behind on the island.

Living together was a new experience for both of them, but Holly was eager enough to make it work to overlook things like wet towels on the bed, stinking trainers kicking out a hum in the hallway, or the toilet seat being left up every single morning. Rupert retreated into himself a bit during the first few weeks, even becoming slightly shy around her, but he'd relaxed as that initial time passed without mishap. Holly was so preoccupied with the stall and creating stock to sell that she didn't have much time to dwell on the state of their relationship, and Rupert too was out of the flat more than he was in it. The situation suited them both perfectly.

‘Here,' Rupert pushed a moist slice of banana cake into her hand and put a takeaway coffee down beside her. ‘I know you don't get time to eat when it's this busy.' He'd bought cake and coffee for Ivy too, and she beamed at him with undisguised adoration. In the beginning, Holly
had been concerned that her new co-worker's dreadlocked hair, swirly ethnic clothing and numerous tattoos wouldn't go down that well with her more conventional boyfriend, but the two of them had hit it off right from the start. She watched now in amusement as Ivy broke off pieces of her own cake and fed them into Rupert's open mouth.

‘What are you up to this afternoon?' Holly asked, wiping crumbs from around her lips with a paper napkin.

‘Oh, you know, hanging around at home, missing you,' he winked. ‘Are we still on for dinner later?'

At Holly's insistence, they'd ended up staying in on the night of her thirtieth birthday at the end of June. She just hadn't felt up to celebrating at the time, and it seemed like a huge waste of resources to pay for a big party when she had a business to start. Rupert, however, had not forgotten that the occasion had as yet gone unmarked, and he was determined to treat her to a fancy night out whether she liked it or not.

‘We better not be going anywhere too expensive,' she chided. Rupert merely raised an eyebrow, then leaned forward and whispered something into Ivy's ear.

‘OH MY GOD!' she shrieked. ‘That's the best place
ever
!'

‘Only the best for my girl,' Rupert grinned, grabbing his bag from the ground and slinging it back over his shoulder. ‘I'm off to tart myself up – see you tonight, gorgeous.'

The two women watched as he snaked his way through the crowds and disappeared from view, and Holly laughed as Ivy let out a deep sigh.

‘What did you ever do to deserve him?' she breathed.

Holly made herself smile in response, but all she could think was:
I don't deserve him. I don't deserve him at all.

When it reached six, Ivy shooed Holly away from the stall, insisting she go home early and get ready for her big night.

‘I can pack everything up,' she told her. ‘You've sold pretty much all your stock, anyway.'

It was true – Holly had made a killing. She hugged her friend farewell and headed off through the market, but instead of taking a left and heading for the station, she ducked right and made her way along the canal path towards Regent's Park. The sun was beginning to dip but the water still shone with the heat of the day. The pathway was littered with empty food wrappers, and tourists sat huddled in the few remaining patches of sunlight, their knees pulled up to avoid banging their toes on the riverboats that were moored, bow to stern, most of the way along. Holly breathed in the smell of the wood burners and admired the boxes of brightly coloured flowers that the more discerning boat owners had arranged along the rooftops of their vessels.

She left the pathway just after passing the famous London Zoo aviary, pulling a face at a peacock that was peering at her through the bars. On the opposite bank, hunting dogs padded up and down the edge of their waterside enclosure. Holly always felt it was an added cruelty to house them right next-door to the warthogs – the smell of those snuffling little creatures must drive the poor things mad with longing.

Regent's Park was alive with the hustle and bustle of
summer. Holly passed groups of friends playing volleyball and Frisbee, families sharing picnics and just about every breed of dog imaginable nosing their way individually through the longer grass by the boating lake. Phelan would love it here, she thought, before quickly pushing the image of the silly red setter out of her mind. There was an ancient willow tree lazily trailing its branches into the water, and Holly found a shady spot on the grass nearby. For a few minutes, she sat and watched as the sunlight danced through the tangle of leaves and warmed the round bellies of the daisies, which were spread out in a chaotic mess by her feet. Nowadays, all she seemed to do was try her best not to think about Zakynthos, but it was always there, sitting like a smudge of light in the corner of her subconscious – there didn't seem to be any way of ignoring it. Shaking her head to break the trance, Holly took out her mobile phone.