My Map of You Page 14

  Jenny had told Holly when she was younger that she’d grown up in Kent, in a small village with only a few shops, acres of farmland and cowpats dotted all down the high street. When Holly had asked why they never went there for a visit, her mum had simply shrugged and told her that there was nothing there for them any more. ‘There’s nothing to be gained from living in the past,’ she’d told her, waggling her finger as she said it and making Holly laugh. ‘The only way to keep going is to keep moving forward, not looking backward.’

  As she sat here now, the photo of happy Jenny from the past clutched in her hand, Holly thought that perhaps her mum had been wrong. Whatever had happened to make this beaming-with-joy girl turn her back on this part of her past must have been something that she really couldn’t take back – something worse than the future she’d ended up in. Holly waited for a beat or two and sure enough, there it was, the enormous punch of guilt that always came. She hadn’t been enough to make her mum happy. Jenny had stared into a future with only Holly and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort.

  She was still sitting there ten minutes later when a loud knock at the door almost made her scream out loud in fright.

  ‘Oh sorry, love – I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

  Holly wound her towel tighter around her front and stepped aside to let Annie in. She looked so cheerful – and slightly mad with her lopsided bun and shiny cheeks – that Holly found herself immediately comforted.

  ‘Tea?’ she asked, retreating into the kitchen.

  ‘Always,’ came the reply. Annie had dumped her bag on the table and was poking through all the scraps of Sandra’s old clothes.

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ she remarked, and Holly flushed.

  ‘Oh no,’ Annie held up her hands. ‘I didn’t mean that in a bad way. Sandra would have loved this. I mean, she was always on this thing,’ she added, gesturing to the sewing machine. Holly had already found herself wondering how the hell she was going to get it back to London.

  ‘Do you really think so?’ Holly asked, pouring boiling water into two mugs.

  ‘Oh, definitely.’ Annie beamed at her. ‘You’re so much like her, you know? People must tell you that all the time.’

  ‘No.’ Holly thought it was better not to lie on this occasion.

  Annie shrugged and took her tea, blowing on the top as Holly darted upstairs to throw on some clothes. The photograph was still on the edge of the basin in the bathroom, but something stopped her from taking it down to show Annie. She was still feeling far too wobbly to get into a conversation about her mum.

  ‘This is gorgeous!’ Annie was standing by the back doors looking up at the patchwork tapestry.

  ‘I thought it would look nice with a bit of colour in here,’ Holly replied. She had never been comfortable with praise, and squirmed as Annie raved about how clever she was to create something so beautiful from a load of old clothes.

  ‘I see you’ve been buying up the local lace supplies too,’ Annie said now, running the hand that wasn’t holding the mug of tea over the treasured swathes of material Holly had picked up the previous day.

  ‘I’m going to use it to make myself some clothes,’ she told her, deciding in that moment that it was exactly what she was going to do.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ Annie asked now. ‘Don’t tell me you drove up into the mountains on that heap of crap parked outside?’

  For a second Holly was confused, but then she laughed as she remembered the moped.

  ‘Aidan drove me up to Volimes,’ she said, immediately regretting it. Annie’s bun wobbled a bit as she absorbed this new bit of information.

  ‘That was going to be my next question,’ she said, looking at Holly with a gleam in her eye. ‘I guessed you might have run into each other a few more times by now.’

  Holly had started to squirm again.

  ‘You could do a lot worse, you know?’ Annie stared into her half-empty cup. ‘Aidan is a good catch.’

  ‘You make him sound like a fish.’ Holly knew it was a lame joke, and Annie’s expression confirmed it.

  ‘You know, if I was ten years younger …’ she went on, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Why let age stop you?’ Holly quipped. ‘If you like him that much, then go for it.’

  Annie waved her arms in front of her face as if a wasp had just flown into the room. ‘You flatter me, Holly love – but he’d no more look at me than he would at old Kostas down the hill.’

  ‘I’m not interested in Aidan like that,’ Holly reassured her. ‘He’s just been showing me around. Taking me to some of the places that my aunt used to go.’

  ‘That’s why I popped round,’ Annie said, taking her mug over to the sink and pouring away the dregs. ‘I thought I could take you up to the market where Sandy used to have her stall sometimes, on the other side of town. I’m going over there this afternoon anyway, and I thought you might like to meet some of her other friends.’

  Holly was incredibly touched and was about to agree, but then she remembered Aidan, and the late lunch they had planned in Keri.

  ‘I actually have plans,’ she admitted sheepishly. ‘Aidan is taking me to Keri.’

  ‘Oh?’ Annie’s eyebrows were practically dusting the ceiling now.

  Bugger. This was not making her claim about Aidan just being a friend look very convincing.

  ‘I can probably rearrange,’ she finished lamely, realising as she said it that she had no way of actually contacting Aidan, even if she wanted to.

  ‘No, no, no!’ Annie was already heading towards the door. ‘I would never want to get in the way of a burgeoning, ahem, friendship between the two of you.’

  If she hadn’t been smiling quite so cheekily, Holly would have thought Annie was having a sly dig.

  ‘Could we go another day, maybe?’ she pleaded at the door. ‘I’d really like to see the market.’

  ‘Of course.’ Annie hesitated for a moment and then stepped forward and put her arms round Holly’s shoulders, pulling her into a hug.

  ‘What’s this for?’ Holly asked, her voice muffled by Annie’s nest of hair.

  ‘You just looked like you needed it, darling,’ Annie said, releasing her and giving her shoulders a quick squeeze before making her way back out to the path.

  She was right, thought Holly, blinking away the tears: she really had needed it.

  Aidan arrived just as Holly was putting the finishing touches to a new blouse she had created using a cream camisole she’d brought with her from London and some of the most delicate of the Greek lace. She’d discovered a little velvet bag of buttons in one of the drawers in Sandra’s bedroom, and it was the last of these that she was sewing on by hand when he appeared at the open back doors.

  ‘I can wait,’ he said straight away, holding up his hand as she made to leap up from her chair. As she bent back over her work, Holly could sense rather than see his eyes on her, and it took every ounce of her self-control to finish the stitch without stabbing herself in the finger with nerves.

  ‘No Phelan today?’ she asked, slipping the finished garment on a hanger and transferring it to the back of another chair.

  ‘Nah.’ Aidan stepped forward and picked up a sleeve of her creation, letting the material slip slowly back through his fingers. ‘Silly idiot’s scared of boats, and I thought we might go out on one after lunch. This is beautiful, by the way.’

  ‘Really?’ Holly blushed with delight. ‘I mean, it’s not a big deal, I just had a few hours to kill.’

  ‘You’d think I’d be good at sewing, being a vet,’ he added. ‘But I’m terrible. There are a lot of poor animals on this island sporting hideous wonky scars thanks to my sausage fingers.’

  Holly giggled, looking down at her own petite hands. Her mum’s had been the same. As Holly was growing up, Jenny would always hold her palm out and Holly would place her own on top so they could compare sizes. She hadn’t thought about that for a long time, and picturing it now made her smile.

  ‘You okay
?’ Aidan was peering at her.

  ‘Yes.’ Holly shook herself out of the memory. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  The small coastal village of Keri was situated on a hillside in the south of the island, around four miles from Lithakia. It took Aidan less than fifteen minutes to drive them there, and before parking the jeep he gave Holly a quick tour, pointing out the clusters of stone houses high up above them on the cliffs and the thin strip of beach separating the main road from the sea. The famous turtle-shaped island of Marathonissi sat large and proud in the ocean opposite the harbour, which was dotted with fishing boats, sailing vessels and even the odd yacht.

  ‘It’s so beautiful here,’ Holly said, as Aidan swung the jeep into a dusty parking space next to the narrow beach.

  ‘The best thing about Keri is the sunset,’ he informed her. ‘I’m happy to hang around for it, if you are?’

  Holly nodded, trying to ignore the bubbles of excitement popping up in her chest. As if on cue, her phone started to vibrate inside her bag. Rupert had messaged earlier saying that he’d call her after his lunch meeting, so it must be him. She ignored it and swung the bag round on her hip. It wasn’t very nice of her, she knew that, but she couldn’t very well talk to him now, not when Aidan still didn’t have any idea that he even existed.

  ‘Ocean View’s up there,’ Aidan was pointing at the sheer cliff face that curved round the bay. There was what looked like a restaurant close to the top, which had an outdoor balcony area dotted with tables and chairs. Knowing that her mum and Sandra must have spent lots of time there gave Holly goosebumps.

  They wandered along the seafront in companionable silence, Holly taking in the bars, restaurants and souvenir shops and Aidan staring out across the water. The little patch of sand was bustling with families, and Aidan explained that there were a lot of holiday villas in this part of the island.

  ‘You wouldn’t really want to take little Billy and little Lizzie down Laganas’ main road, now, would you?’ he joked.

  ‘I haven’t been down there at night,’ Holly confessed. ‘Is it mental?’

  ‘Well, that depends,’ he looked at her sideways. The light breeze that was coming in across the sea had blown some of his curls up in the air. ‘If stepping over puddles of puke is your thing, then you’d love it.’

  She pulled a face which made it very clear that no, that was definitely not her thing, and Aidan laughed. They’d reached the end of the main road now and arrived at the harbour. Considering she’d never actually been on a proper boat, Holly was surprised at how much she was drawn to them now. She loved the fact that they all had names, and asked Aidan what he’d call a boat if he ever bought one.

  ‘Probably something predictably Irish, like the Shamrock,’ he shrugged. ‘I’ve never really thought about it. What about you?’

  ‘It would be something Greek,’ Holly said. ‘But I haven’t learnt enough words yet to pick a good one. Did it take you long to learn?’

  Aidan picked up a flat stone and threw it sideways into the water, jumping up and cheering as it skimmed the surface and bounced three times before sinking.

  ‘Less time than it took me to learn that trick,’ he grinned. ‘And I’m a lot better at speaking Greek than I am at skimming stones.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have the first clue how to do either,’ she said, squinting up at him through her sunglasses and noticing for the first time that he only had a dimple on one side of his lopsided grin.

  ‘Come on – I’ll teach you!’

  It turned out that skimming stones was nowhere near as easy as it looked, and after ten minutes of Holly only managing what Aidan quickly coined ‘drop and plops’, she was just deliberately lobbing stones right to the bottom with frustration.

  ‘I’m sensing that prickly side of you is back,’ Aidan taunted as she squinted with concentration and flung out her arm, only for another pebble to sink.

  ‘This is a stupid game,’ she told him. The sun was beating down on her shoulders and she absent-mindedly slipped her vest straps down. For a brief second, so brief that Holly couldn’t be sure if she’d imagined it, Aidan’s eyes skimmed over the bare flesh.

  ‘Come on, Missy,’ he said, selecting a new stone from the pile he’d made around their feet. Moving right behind her, he picked up her right hand and slotted the warm rock into it.

  ‘You have to hold it like this, see?’ he instructed, turning her hand to the side with his own and gently pushing her index finger up so it hooked over the top of the stone.

  ‘If you throw it flat, like this, then it should skim,’ he added. Despite the heat, Holly felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Aidan had slipped his other hand round her waist, and was explaining how she must lean into the throw. She bit her lip and forced herself to concentrate, imagining her stone hitting the water and flinging back up again through the surface.

  Aidan’s breath was in her hair and caressing the dip between her collarbones. As he leaned against her and pulled her arm back ready to throw, Holly felt a stirring somewhere deep inside herself that made her hands turn instantly clammy, and just as she was about to release the stone it slipped, hitting the concrete edge of the harbour wall and vanishing beneath the water.

  ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for skimming,’ she said, determinedly defusing the strange atmosphere with a laugh.

  Aidan stepped back and let go of her hand. There was something in his eyes that made Holly shiver, a sort of animal hunger, but he quickly pulled himself together.

  ‘Like I said, it takes bloody years to learn. Come on, let’s go and get you fed.’

  15

  When Holly was a child, her mum had always encouraged her to try new things. Whether it was scaling the biggest tree in the park, knitting herself a teddy bear or hurtling down a hill in roller skates, Jenny had always been enthusiastic (though perhaps less so about the roller skates after the tenth or so bloody knee). This translated into their meals too. Holly could remember eating Stilton omelettes with tinned anchovies and banana and lettuce sandwiches. Anything she had wanted to try, Jenny would let her have it, even if it must have turned her stomach to prepare it.

  When her drinking started, however, Jenny lost the lust she’d always had for life, and for Holly’s life, and they’d increasingly end up with oven chips and beans or cheap microwaveable pizzas. Jenny would plonk whatever it was down on the table and tell her to ‘eat up, now, before it gets cold’, but then push her own food around on the plate before scraping a good two thirds of it into the bin. It was as if for all those earlier years, Jenny had been wearing a mask – a ‘perfect mother’ disguise. After years of watching her mum fall further into addiction and darkness, Holly found it impossible to believe that the warm, loving person she’d grown up with had ever been the real Jenny at all. She’d just been playing at being the mum she had never really wanted to be.

  It was only when she started seeing Rupert that Holly rediscovered her appetite for varied cuisine. He liked to eat out as much as possible, and all his working lunches meant that he was an expert when it came to the best new restaurants and hidden gems. After a few months of gentle persuasion from her boyfriend, Holly started devouring things like sushi, Indian tapas and curries that made her sweat. It was one of the things they did together that she enjoyed the most.

  Being here in Zakynthos, however, Holly had developed a real taste for more simple food. It was all so fresh and delicious that it didn’t need much in the way of accompaniment, and she thought she could live quite happily just eating the same things here for the rest of her life.

  Aidan was more of a typical man, and glanced at the menu for only a few seconds before ordering himself a steak.

  ‘What?’ He held his hands up as Holly pulled a face at him. ‘I never get to go out – this is a treat for me.’

  ‘I wasn’t judging, honest,’ she grinned, choosing a tomato salad and grilled sardines for herself. The waitress at Ocean View was young and British, and Holly felt a mild s
tab of jealousy. How wonderful to be living and working in a place like this in your early twenties. When she shared her thoughts with Aidan, however, he laughed and said that the poor girl was probably working seven days a week and getting paid less than minimum wage. For this view, Holly thought privately, gazing out across the sun-dappled water, I’d happily work for free. They had chosen a table out on the terrace by the outer wall, and everything below them was green, blue and golden. It was stunning.

  They chatted while they waited for the food to arrive, mostly about Aidan’s work and the characters he encountered, but also about Holly’s passion for sewing. She was astonished to find herself admitting to Aidan that she actually hadn’t done any for over a year. Well, not until coming here.

  ‘There just never seems to be enough time to do anything in London,’ she explained. ‘Everything seems so rushed and hectic all the time.’

  Aidan nodded. ‘I’d hate it,’ he told her. ‘That’s what I love so much about this place; everyone takes their time and there’s none of this pressure coming in from all sides.’

  ‘I love that too,’ she agreed, even though she’d never really considered it properly before. She slept better here and ate better and generally felt less stressed. It was hard to feel anxious when it was so warm and everything around you was so beautiful. Since arriving on the island, she felt almost as if some of the air had been let out of her. It was ridiculous, though, given the circumstances and the fact that she’d never been here before.

  ‘Are you sure this is your first time on the island?’ Aidan asked suddenly. Was he actually a mind reader?

  ‘It’s weird.’ Holly took a sip of her water. ‘I keep getting these waves of déjà vu, like my body sort of recognises where I am. Does that make me sound mad?’

  ‘Yes.’ Aidan laughed. ‘But perhaps it just means that you feel at home here. I mean, you do own a home here, after all. Do you have a place back in London too?’

  ‘God, no!’ Holly exclaimed. ‘I couldn’t even begin to afford to buy somewhere. I’ve always rented.’