My Map of You (37 page)

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.

‘After you left,' he said, ‘I felt as if someone was watching me. I felt a presence with me all the time. I thought I was being haunted there for a while.'

Holly looked up at him to see if he was winding her up, but he was still looking down.

‘I realised that it was my conscience,' he said. ‘Everything that you'd been through, losing your mam and then finding your dad only to almost lose him again, it shook me up.'

Holly wanted to tell him that he wasn't the only one, but she sensed the need to remain silent.

‘I never really told you the whole truth about my own mam,' he said now, daring to glance at her. ‘She left me when I was just a boy and I felt as if I spent my whole life just trying to be loved by her, trying to be enough. Honestly, Holly, I was a man obsessed. I was so desperate for her approval that I let her get away with anything. My ex pointed this out to me, of course, but I wouldn't hear a word against my mam. In the end, she had enough and she left – and that was when it all went wrong.'

‘Did you blame your mum for the break-up?' Holly asked, so quietly that she wasn't sure if he'd heard her at first.

‘Yes.' He turned to her again and this time their eyes met. ‘For a long time I was eaten up with anger towards her, but meeting you made me realise what a stupid eejit I'd been.'

He took a deep breath and looked at her again. ‘After you went back to London in May, I went over to
Kefalonia to see her. To see my mam, I mean. I wanted to try and make up for the past few years. But most of all I went because of you, because of what you'd taught me.'

‘Me?' Holly was shocked.

‘You made me realise that I was wasting my time being mad at her. You don't even have a mother and there I was being a stubborn arse and refusing to speak to mine. All of a sudden, I just let go of all that resentment. And I tell you what, it felt fecking amazing.'

Holly couldn't help herself, she beamed at him.

‘But then I came back here,' Aidan's tone was serious again. ‘And I still felt as if something was haunting me. It took me a while, but then I realised that it was Love. The pesky fecker was sat up on my shoulder waggling his fing—'

‘Oh, come on!' Holly interrupted him with a loud snort of laughter. ‘Love living up on your shoulder? Are you on something?'

Aidan looked shocked, then he too started to chuckle.

‘You're right,' he said, running a hand through his untidy stack of curls. ‘I've contracted a right case of the soppies. Here, take my keys and drive me to the hospital immediately.'

At the mention of the hospital, Holly's momentary good cheer evaporated.

‘I still can't believe you hid the truth from me,' she whispered. ‘Dennis could so easily have died that day, and I would never have known him.'

‘But he didn't,' he said, almost pleading with her. ‘I know what I did was wrong, but I am a fecking eejit. I always have been. I made the wrong decision and then my
feelings for you confused everything. I was selfish and arrogant, I know that now, but what went on between us … Holly, that was all real.'

‘I understand why you did it,' Holly said, glancing at him then looking back up towards the map. ‘I'm just not sure I can trust you again.'

He appeared stung by this and stood again, pacing up and down in the small space as Holly sat watching him.

‘In the beginning, you were just another girl who needed to be looked after,' he said. ‘I'd been looking after women my entire life, so I think I took on that role willingly. I didn't even stop to question whether or not you wanted looking after. That was wrong of me, because looking at you now, and all that you've achieved with your work, I can see that you don't need anyone to look after you.'

‘You're wrong,' Holly interrupted him. ‘I do need to be looked after – but it's me who has to do it. Not you, not Rupert, not even my dad. If I can't look after myself and make myself happy, then what chance have I got of ever being happy with someone else?'

‘But what if someone else
wanted
to make you happy? What if that someone wanted it to be their job?' He was edging towards her now and Holly flashed him a warning look.

‘I would say that it shouldn't be a job,' she replied. ‘I'm not a stray puppy that you have to nurse back to health – and I'm not going to let what happened to my mum and Sandra happen to me.'

He went to interrupt but she hurried on, talking over his words.

‘The thing is, I don't think people ever really change, they just become a better or worse version of who they've always been, depending on what happens to them. But I do believe now that, at a certain point, you get to make a choice: to follow a darker, easier path, or cut your way through the undergrowth to find a better one. I think I've been taking the easy path for far too long now, and it's about time I grew a pair and changed my life for the better.'

‘I think you already have,' Aidan said. He was smiling at her now and had stopped pacing, coming to a halt in front of the map he'd created for her. ‘What you've been doing, with your work and the catwalk shows and all that – it's so amazing. I know I haven't known you long, but I can honestly say I've never been prouder of a single soul in my entire life.'

Holly looked up again to see if she could detect anything in his face that hinted at humour, but he looked deadly serious. She'd spent all this time despising him for what he'd done to her, but being here now, with his eyes boring holes in her skull with their sheer intensity, she saw how short-sighted she'd been.

‘I think you know me well enough,' she said. ‘You knew I'd love that map, for example.'

Aidan glanced over his shoulder and Holly was surprised to see a slight blush creep across his cheeks.

‘I wasn't even sure if you'd ever see it.' He shrugged. ‘I wanted to make it anyway, just in case. It's my map of you, Holly – my map of how I fell in love with you.'

A solitary tear slid down Holly's cheek and landed with a splash in her wine glass.

‘I was scared to come back,' she admitted. ‘I knew I
would have to at some point, to see Dennis and Maria, but I kept telling myself to wait a bit longer.'

‘What made you change your mind?' he asked.

‘Someone made an offer on this place.' She swung an arm round. ‘I couldn't bear the idea of losing it and it made me realise that I wasn't in the right place, that this is my home, not London, and …' She trailed off as she took in the smirk on his face. ‘What?'

‘I might have a small confession to make,' he said, trying and failing to keep the corners of his mouth downturned.

‘Another one?' She raised an eyebrow. ‘What the hell have you done now?'

He laughed at that, and it was a glorious sound. ‘I'm the one who made the offer, you daft mare,' he grinned. ‘It turns out that I couldn't bear the idea of you never seeing the place again either. I figured if it belonged to me, then you could always see it again if you ever came back – and of course I hoped that you would.'