My Map of You Page 2

2

  Like so many people carving out a life for themselves in the UK’s capital, Holly had ended up in London rather than actually choosing to live there. It was the last place her mum had moved the two of them to, and the only real place that Holly could describe as home, given the years she’d been there. It had never felt like much of a home, however. Not in the way Holly took the word ‘home’ to mean, anyway. Sometimes she would just stop in her tracks as scores of people hurried past, wondering what the hell she was doing there. She hated hustle and bustle and rubbish and rudeness, yet here she was.

  Holly worked in Camden at the head offices of a large online clothing retailer called Flash. Along with a team of around fifteen others, it was her job to write enticing product descriptions and then upload them to the website. While it wasn’t quite as creative as Holly would have liked, she found the work undemanding and occasionally even enjoyable. The money was average and the benefits worse, but Holly still felt lucky to have the job, given her circumstances.

  The worst thing about working at Flash was undoubtedly her line manager, Fiona, who was as humourless and dry as a box of stale cornflakes. She knew it was a total cliché to have a boss who was a bitch, but there it was.

  As Holly slid into her seat just as the clock reached 9.30 a.m., an email pinged up from Fiona demanding that she redo all the copy for the latest line of palazzo pants. Great.

  ‘What’s with the face?’ Aliana hissed ten minutes later, causing Holly to almost leap out of her chair in fright.

  ‘Where the hell did you come from?’ she shot back, mopping up the tea she’d just spilled all over the desk.

  ‘The floor,’ Aliana replied, laughing. ‘I wasn’t about to let the old dragon see that I was late, was I?’

  Aliana felt the same way about Fiona as Holly did.

  ‘Who was late?’

  Fiona had popped up out of nowhere like a joyless jack-in-the-box.

  ‘Nobody.’ Aliana smiled sweetly.

  ‘Why is your computer off?’ countered Fiona, her nostrils flaring. She had her hair pulled back in a very severe bun today and there was a line around the edges of her face where she hadn’t blended her foundation properly.

  ‘It crashed.’ Aliana was still smiling like something the Aardman animators would mould out of clay.

  Fiona pulled a face. ‘You can make up the extra fifteen minutes at lunchtime,’ she snapped, before stalking away back to her office.

  ‘I wish she’d find herself a boyfriend already,’ Aliana groaned, sticking her tongue out at Fiona’s departing back. ‘I’ve never met someone so uptight in my whole life.’

  Holly nodded. ‘She is a bit … stiff. Maybe she just needs a good night out.’

  ‘Well, I’m not taking her!’ exclaimed Aliana, mistyping her login password for the third time in a row then swearing as the system promptly locked her out.

  Holly stared at the trousers on her screen: they were a dark blue paisley print with a cinched waist and a flattering, wide-cut leg. Holly admired the tailoring, wondering for the millionth time since she’d started working at Flash why she no longer made her own clothes. It had been the one thing, during those terrible, dark years, to keep her sane. Nothing else had made her quite as happy since. Not even Ru—

  ‘So, how’s that sexy man of yours?’ Aliana cut in. She was on hold to the IT service desk and had the patience of a wasp.

  ‘He’s great.’ Holly thawed a little. ‘He brought me a robe back from Japan. It’s silk and embroidered with all these orchids and—’

  ‘Did it cost a bomb?’ Aliana interrupted. ‘I bet it did.’

  While Holly was fully aware that Rupert had a good job – he was a corporate accountant – and that he was very comfortably off, it still grated a bit when Aliana equated all his positive attributes as being to do with money. Having grown up with very little herself, and certainly no luxuries, Holly didn’t ever take money for granted and found herself agonising over even the smallest purchase. Aliana would blithely burn a large hole in her credit card during a lunchtime visit to the clothing shops on Camden High Street, while Holly, by comparison, would take three weeks to decide if she really wanted those winter boots enough to shell out £40. It had taken her a while to get used to Rupert’s wealth, and while she pretended to love it when he took her to expensive restaurants or presented her with an obscenely large bouquet of flowers, inside it made her itch with discomfort.

  ‘I didn’t ask,’ she sniffed. ‘I assume it was an early birthday present.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Aliana looked at her sideways. ‘The big three-0. How are you feeling about it? I’m bloody glad that I’ve still got five years to go. I mean, no offence, but I definitely want to be married by the time I’m thirty.’

  ‘None taken,’ lied Holly. ‘And I’m not all that bothered, to be honest. It’s only another birthday just like any other. I don’t want a fuss made.’

  ‘Oh, but Rupert will definitely want to make a big fuss,’ said Aliana, failing to keep the envy out of her voice. ‘He’ll probably take you on a skiing trip to Verbier – or buy you a diamond ring.’

  At this, Holly actually laughed.

  ‘What? I bet he bloody does now and you’ll have to eat your words,’ Aliana continued, breaking off for a moment to sweet-talk the guy on the other end of the phone. Once logged in, she ignored her overflowing inbox and opened Facebook.

  ‘Wow. I’m sorry, Hols, but your boyfriend is seriously fit.’

  Holly looked across at the photos on Aliana’s screen. They were of Rupert, taken while he was on his recent work trip to Japan. With his pale blue shirtsleeves rolled up and a lopsided, slightly tipsy smile on his face, he did look very handsome.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ she smiled.

  ‘If you ever, you know, get sick of him or anythi— OW!’ The hole puncher that Holly had lobbed across the desk bounced off Aliana’s arm and hit the carpet.

  In the end, Holly had to abandon her plan to deal with the letter at lunchtime, because Aliana dragged her to the market to get a falafel wrap (‘They are so good, babe. It’s like having an orgasm in your mouth!’) and then to the nail bar. Holly resisted the temptation to join her. She had made her lunch the night before and brought it to work with her. The falafel wraps might look delicious and smell divine, but why would you spend £4.50 on one when you could build your own tuna and mayonnaise sandwiches for a fraction of the price?

  The morning’s sheeting rain had blessedly passed, but the sky remained heavy with thick clouds the colour of paving slabs. Camden did its best to inject some colour into proceedings, boasting extravagantly decorated stalls and clusters of punks with neon-bright Mohicans. Holly wandered past them all as if in a daze, letting her friend fill the silence with an uninterrupted patter of excited babble.

  Having conveniently forgotten that she had been told to make up the lost time from her tardiness that morning, Aliana was summoned into Fiona’s office the minute they got back and rewarded with the mind-numbing task of deleting all the old stock off the website.

  While she felt for her friend, Holly was glad of the peace and quiet. She always worked far better when she could really get into a zone and concentrate. Instead of homing in on fabrics and fastenings, however, she found herself thinking about her mother again.

  Back in the days of Holly’s early childhood, before Jenny Wright had started turning to the bottle to get her through each day, she used to make up bedtime stories for Holly to help her fall asleep – clearly something she had always struggled with, even as a very young girl. One of these stories had been about a fairy called Hope, who her mum described as having blonde hair plaited into pigtails and a blue dress with red petticoats underneath. When Hope danced, her skirts would swirl together – and sometimes she spun so fast that her dress looked purple. Holly had always loved that idea, because her favourite colour was purple – she was even wearing it today.

  Whenever Holly was having a particularly tough day, or when she found herself in a sit
uation that frightened her, she still conjured up Hope. She would let her dance, just on the very edge of her mind, watching as she spun round, faster and faster. As Holly sat at her desk now, gazing at her screen but seeing only her past, she felt Hope’s presence as keenly as she had all those years ago, back when she had no idea just how scary life could become.

  ‘Your phone’s ringing.’ Aliana had wheeled across and actually nudged her. Flustered, Holly snatched up her mobile; dimly aware as she did so of Hope dissolving into a smudge of colour.

  ‘Hi, darling!’ It was Rupert. He always called her at around this time, when the sleep-inducing effects of his lunchtime drink had kicked in. She felt sorry for him, in a way, having to do so many meetings with clients that expected to be entertained. But then, he did seem to enjoy himself.

  ‘You sound worn out,’ Holly told him sympathetically, as she always did.

  ‘Had a few at lunchtime,’ he admitted. ‘In fact, the boys and I were just discussing having a few more after we’re done here. Can we count you in?’

  Drinking with the boys meant that Rupert would be drinking a lot, and staying out very late, which in turn meant that Holly would probably have to put off doing anything about the contents of that envelope for another whole day.

  ‘Yes,’ she told him, suddenly excited. ‘Will you be at the usual place?’

  ‘Oh, I should think so …’ Someone on Rupert’s end of the line was distracting him. ‘I’ll text you if we move. See you later, sexy.’

  ‘You going out later, then?’ Aliana didn’t even pretend she hadn’t been eavesdropping.

  Holly nodded.

  ‘I don’t have any plans …’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, stop making that face,’ Holly chided. ‘You can come too.’

  With Aliana on board, the chances of her making it home before midnight had now gone from slim to non-existent. A wave of relief flooded over her, taking with it the melancholy thoughts that had been dogging her all day. Refreshed and defiant, she turned back to her screen and found that inspiration had mercifully made a return.

  3

  It had taken Holly many years and a fair few failed attempts before she realised that the whole ‘relationship’ thing was just a big game. All you had to do was work out what the other person wanted, and then provide it for them. Simple.

  She had decided that she wanted to provide Rupert with whatever he wanted about five minutes after they first met each other. He’d bumped into her in a bar – literally – and spilled red wine down her dress, prompting a mortified apology and a promise to take her shopping for a new dress the very next day to make up for it. When they met after lunch outside Bond Street station, Rupert had immediately whisked her into one designer boutique after another, urging her to try on dresses that cost hundreds of pounds.

  For Holly, who had spent her teens and twenties making her own clothes from scraps of material and second-hand shop bargains, the afternoon had felt like a corny romcom where she was the star. She had never been materialistic, but letting this confident man lead her from rail to rail and wave aside her protests at how much everything cost felt utterly decadent, and totally unlike anything she had experienced before. Hours later, as they clinked their Champagne flutes and gazed out over London from the window of Paramount bar at the top of Centre Point, Holly looked down at her brand-new dress boasting a Burberry label and felt, for the first time in a long while, like she was on a path that was heading in the right direction.

  When Rupert had gently taken the glass from her hand and placed it on the table, running his fingers down the side of her face before leaning across to kiss her, Holly had told herself that she must not, under any circumstances, do anything to scare this man off. In that moment, the all-new Holly burst into bloom, baptised by Champagne bubbles and the taste of Rupert’s kiss.

  Making him happy was so straightforward at first: she simply listened. He enjoyed talking about himself and she enjoyed hearing all about his life. In time, he opened up about his upbringing (a sprawling house in the Kent countryside with two fairly conservative parents and one older brother), his job (an accountant in a large City firm) and even his past relationships (Franny, his university girlfriend and first love, who broke his heart when she went off travelling and fell in love with an Aussie surfer), followed by a series of girls he’d met through contacts at work. Rupert’s disparaging descriptions of these past conquests included ‘utterly daft’, ‘bottom-numbingly dull’ and ‘a total bloody stalker’.

  It didn’t take more than a few dates for Holly to realise that Rupert wasn’t a fan of overly keen girls, so she’d made very sure that she could never fall under that label – even waiting an agonising three days to reply to text messages and pretending not to be free for half the dates she was invited on. For some reason, making herself unavailable and refusing to chase Rupert had made her utterly irresistible to him. She was vaguely aware that all the game-playing probably wasn’t the healthiest approach, but from what she had read in magazines and online about relationships, everyone was at it. Pretending to be something she wasn’t was a skill that Holly had perfected many years ago.

  Of course, Rupert eventually did get around to asking her about her own upbringing (she told him her parents died in a car crash), job (she’d been honest about that), and her past relationships (she’d had a few boyfriends, but had never been in love). Holly was astute enough to realise that a man with an ego as endearingly transparent as Rupert’s would adore the idea that he might be her first love. And it wasn’t a complete fib, anyway, because she never had been in love before she met him. When he’d plucked up the courage to admit that he’d fallen for her about six months after they met, she’d had no qualms about saying those three little words back to him. Okay, so there hadn’t been any fireworks or a eureka moment when she realised she was in love, but in that moment she believed that she must be. Rupert was as good a candidate as she was ever likely to find for the position of first love.

  In the end they were twenty minutes late to meet everyone that evening because Aliana had insisted on taking off all her make-up and reapplying it from scratch – a task that proved tricky given the large acrylic nails she’d had attached during their lunch hour.

  ‘Darling, there you are,’ Rupert sprang off his stool as she and Aliana made their way through the crowded bar to where he and his four companions had managed to snag a table. Pulling her into a hug, he slid a casual hand across her rear and gave it a small squeeze. ‘I’ve been thinking about this morning all day,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t wait to get you home later …’

  Holly gave him a quick kiss on the cheek in response. ‘You remember Aliana,’ she said, turning and putting her arm round her friend. Rupert smiled broadly and leaned forward to give her a kiss.

  ‘Aliana, so good to see you! It’s been ages, hasn’t it? But then Holly does like to keep me all to herself.’

  ‘Can’t say I blame her.’ Aliana returned his kiss enthusiastically, a flirty giggle escaping her painted pink lips. Holly did her best not to roll her eyes, instead stepping around the two of them to greet Rupert’s friends.

  Toby was the first to get up, dwarfing her with his vast, bear-like frame and yanking her against his chest for a hug, while at the same time burying her face in one of his rather sodden armpits. ‘Holly! You’re looking well. Love the purple – suits you.’

  Running her hands across her skirt self-consciously, Holly smiled up at him. Despite the whiffy pits, she had a bit of a soft spot for Toby, who was sweet, friendly and unashamedly loud. His girlfriend, however, was a drier cracker to swallow.

  ‘Penelope, how are you?’

  Toby’s girlfriend regarded her sternly over the top of her wine glass. The first time Holly had been introduced to Penelope, she was convinced that she’d managed to offend her in some way, but Rupert was quick to reassure her that it was fine, and that his best mate’s girlfriend just had a ‘funny way’ about her.

  ‘As well as can b
e expected, given that this bar seems to have turned into a zoo,’ Penelope told her. She didn’t bother to get out of her seat, but she did instruct Toby to get an empty glass from the bar so that Holly could share her bottle of Pinot Grigio.

  The other couple at the table, Clemmie and Boris, didn’t get up either, but both greeted her with warm smiles. Holly had struggled for years to feel accepted by strangers, and with this crowd she always found herself slipping into another version of herself – one that was more confident and boisterous than the real Holly.

  ‘Round of shots?’ suggested Rupert, who had finally disentangled himself from Aliana. This elicited a cheer from the table – and from Holly, who for once actually relished the idea of the oblivion that enough alcohol would bring.

  ‘So, Holly, have you thought about what you’re going to do for your birthday?’ Clemmie asked. ‘I mean, it is the big three-0, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh God, don’t remind me,’ groaned Holly.

  ‘I think we should all get really dressed up, you know, make a real effort, and go somewhere really nice,’ Clemmie continued, gently elbowing Penelope into nodding along in agreement.

  Clemmie – who was wearing a jazzy monochrome jumpsuit with bright orange stilettos – always looked dressed up as far as Holly was concerned. But it was nice that they obviously wanted to include her.

  ‘You girls are the ones who know all the best places,’ she told them, hoping the flattery would go down well. ‘I don’t have the first clue.’

  ‘There’s that new bar near Spitalfields Market,’ Boris suggested. ‘You need a secret password to get in, or some silly crap like that, but I take clients there all the time so I’m sure I can sort it out.’

  ‘When is your birthday again?’ asked Penelope. She didn’t seem as excited as the others, but then nothing ever really seemed to excite her.

  ‘It’s the thirtieth of June,’ said Rupert, arriving back with a tray of tequilas. Holly did a quick count and realised he’d bought them two each. She could almost hear her liver weeping in protest.