My Map of You Page 34

  ‘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.’

  ‘You must have really loved my Auntie Sandra,’ Holly realised. ‘You knew she’d never want this house to leave the family.’

  ‘That’s probably true,’ he agreed. ‘But my motivations were all linked directly to you, I’m afraid. I’m not quite as heroic as you might have thought.’

  ‘Hang on.’ Holly snapped her head round to look at him. ‘Was it you who put mud in my washing machine?’

  Aidan said nothing, but his face had turned an interesting shade of maroon.

  ‘It bloody was, wasn’t it? You sneaked in and sabotaged the place!’

  ‘In my defence,’ he laughed, blocking the blows Holly was now raining down on him, ‘I thought it would be harder to sell if everything was falling apart.’

  ‘I had a lump on my head for a bloody week from that cupboard door!’ she scolded.

  ‘Shit – I’m sorry.’ He was still laughing. ‘Your poor little he
ad. I didn’t mean to hurt you. You shouldn’t go slamming doors, though, really.’

  ‘The funny thing is,’ Holly told him now, a sweet warmth spreading through her chest, ‘this house actually belongs to Dennis. After the truth came out and my mum left with me, he told Sandra that she could have it. He felt so guilty about what he’d done to her that he handed it over without asking for a single penny.’

  ‘Steady now!’ Aidan laughed. ‘That dad of yours will be stealing my good-guy crown in a minute.’

  For a few minutes, they were both laughing too much to speak, more with pure relief than because anything was particularly funny. It felt good to let go of some of the tension that had been crackling between them ever since Aidan knocked on the door.

  ‘Don’t go home,’ he said now, suddenly serious. ‘Stay here. I’ll give you a job. You can be my receptionist or something.’

  ‘There you go again, trying to rescue me,’ Holly scolded him gently, with a light slap to the back of his hand. ‘That man who hired me to make stuff for his show, he wants me to do lots more, and I can work from wherever in the world that I want. And I still have my stall back in London. I’m going to be sending clothes back there as well. So, I’ve got a perfectly good job, thanks very much – and it’s one I happen to love.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He looked downcast and wrapped his fingers around her wrists. ‘I just thought …’

  ‘What? That you could look after me? That I would move here and work in your little clinic and we’d live happily ever after?’

  ‘Is that such a bad thing?’

  ‘If you must know,’ she told him, removing her hands carefully from his, ‘I have decided to stay. I’ve made all the arrangements already.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’ Aidan looked like he was about to leap out of his seat and punch the air. ‘That’s … Well, that’s great news. The best!’

  ‘You just told me not to go home,’ she explained. ‘But the thing is, I already am home. This is the only place that’s ever felt remotely like a home. I can be myself here.’

  ‘You know, my mam said the exact same thing to me in Kefalonia,’ Aidan said, his eyes bright with reluctant tears. ‘And now I can’t imagine living anywhere else in the world but here, on this stupidly gorgeous island with all these stupidly brilliant people.’

  ‘I think me being here would make my mum happy,’ Holly told him, putting her empty glass down on the table. The two of them had settled next to one another on the sofa now, both looking up at the map rather than at each other. ‘She asked Sandra to forgive her so many times, over so many years. I think she always wanted to come back here.’

  ‘So many people have made so many mistakes,’ Aidan said, shifting slightly. ‘And I include myself in that.’

  Holly turned to face him and put a timid hand on his shoulder. ‘I don’t want to talk about the past any more. I want to focus on the future. I’m sick of carrying so many ghosts around with me all the time.’

  ‘Does that mean you forgive me?’ he whispered, letting his head fall to the side so that his hair brushed the back of her hand. Holly felt a stirring deep inside herself and moved her hand quickly back into her lap.

  ‘I think so,’ she told him honestly. ‘I’m no angel myself, you know. What I did to poor Rupert was inexcusable. You told me that I just wanted to be looked after, that I reeled people in then pushed them away – and you were right.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘But you did. And it hurt, it really did, but I needed to hear it. I told myself that I wasn’t in my right mind when I slept with you – I even moved in with Rupert when I got back to London, for God’s sake.’

  Aidan flinched.

  ‘But I never forgave myself. I always felt like he deserved better, and it was true. I never loved him, not really, it just took me a while to pluck up enough courage to admit it. I hadn’t really had any stability in my life since my mum died, then I met Rupert and he was so … I don’t know. So capable. I think I was so tired of looking after myself at that point that I relished the chance to let someone else take over for a while. Admitting that I was wrong about that and choosing to be alone again has been a very big step for me.’

  ‘I was so jealous,’ Aidan told her. ‘I was a complete arse to you, but I didn’t appreciate how tough it must have been, him turning up like that.’

  ‘It wasn’t the best timing,’ Holly agreed, laughing now at the ridiculousness of it all.

  Aidan looked sheepish. ‘I followed you down to Laganas that night,’ he confessed, earning himself a stare of disbelief. ‘What? I did! I sat in my bloody jeep all the time you were dancing in that bar, then I watched you and that posh boy walk up the road together arm in arm, like some scorned hero in a slushy romance film.’

  ‘Well, that’s just embarrassing,’ Holly laughed. She couldn’t believe she was hearing all this.

  ‘It is. I’m pathetic,’ he sighed dramatically, pulling what Holly could only presume was his best scorned-hero-in-a-slushy-romance-film face.

  For a few minutes, as she looked into his eyes and traced the haphazard freckles down to his big, smiling mouth, Holly could picture herself falling into his arms. She imagined what it would feel like to have him kiss her again, remembering how her body had responded to him before with such an urgent need that it left her breathless. It would be so easy to give in to what he wanted.

  Aidan, as if reading her mind, leaned towards her and slipped one big hand gently into her hair. His lips were only centimetres from her own when she abruptly pulled away.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ He looked more confused than hurt.

  Holly took a deep breath, forcing her spinning insides to slow down a few gears. ‘It’s not you …’ she began, stopping before she finished it with ‘it’s me’. Aidan was looking at her with a mixture of lust and bemusement.

  ‘I don’t want to be with you,’ she managed at last.

  The smile vanished from his face and he stared at her, bewildered.

  ‘Right now, I mean. I do have feelings for you,’ she assured him. ‘It’s just that I need some time on my own. I need to have a relationship with myself for a while – does that even make sense?’

  He nodded, trying to smile.

  ‘Before you met me, I’d hated myself for a very long time. I don’t think I’d given myself a break since I was a teenager – certainly not since my mum died. I did my best to pretend that I was a confident person, that I knew what I wanted, but really I was a mess. When I got the letter from Sandra and came over here, I was terrified. I’d grown so used to hating myself and my mum and everything about my past, I was afraid that I’d be made to face up to all that if I came here – and I was right.’

  ‘But … ?’ he asked, letting his hand rest casually against her leg.

  ‘But the longer I spent here, the more I realised that I needed to forgive my mum – and forgive myself too. I blamed myself for what happened to her, and even now I still feel partly responsible. If I’d never been born, she would probably have stayed here with Sandra and everything would have worked out.’

  ‘You can’t think like that,’ he said.

  ‘I know. Dennis made me realise that today.’ She smiled at the memory of her trip out on the fishing boat that afternoon. ‘I think meeting me has helped him forgive himself too.’

  ‘That makes sense.’ Aidan was smiling at her again with what looked like real affection. ‘You’re quite something, you know. Of course your old man’s proud of you.’

  ‘But it’s taking some getting used to, this whole liking myself thing,’ she continued. ‘I just think that if I start something with you then I might never know what it feels like to just be with myself for a while – the version of me that I actually like, that is. I need to be comfortable in my own skin before I let you get underneath it.’

  She thought he would come back at her with an argument, or plead with her to change her mind, but instead Aidan just leaned forward and pulled her i
nto a hug, pressing her cheek against his chest and resting his stubbly chin on the top of her head. The feel of him, so firm and warm beneath his T-shirt, almost caused Holly’s resolve to crumble like a broken biscuit, but she forced herself not to lift her head. If her mouth happened to find itself anywhere near his in that moment, she was pretty sure that there would be little if anything she would be able to do to stop it taking charge of the situation.

  Aidan said something, but it was muffled by her hair. Holly pulled back and looked up at him questioningly.

  ‘Under your skin?’ he grinned. ‘You make me sound like I’m Hannibal Lecter or something, woman.’ Then, suddenly more serious, ‘Do you think there will ever be a me and you?’

  Holly looked at his tatty clothes, at the dark smear of grease on his shin and the scab on his knee. There were patches of peeling sunburnt skin in the crooks of his arms and an angry-looking pimple had started to emerge from the soft area around his nose. He looked so beautiful to her that she thought she might cry, so she made herself look away, up at the map he’d made for her – his map of her – and let her eyes find the little red heart he’d scribbled in biro.

  ‘Oh, you know, maybe one day,’ she said at last, grinning sideways at him and reaching for her empty glass. ‘But for the time being, why don’t we start with a glass of this very excellent wine?’

  Holly and Aidan sat together in the little house on the hill in Zakynthos, oblivious to the late September sun slipping down behind the mountains and the moon rising up to take its place. The white-stone walls around them turned indigo as night fell and the stars took it in turns to twinkle, each one competing to shine the brightest.

  If they’d stepped outside and looked up at the sparkling tapestry laid out above them, they would have been able to trace a map between the burning points, running their fingers north, east, south and west, discovering new ways to navigate from one star to the next. But there was no need. After a lifetime of searching, they had each found their way home.