‘Does London feel like home to you?’ he asked.
It was a difficult question and Holly fell silent as she considered her answer.
‘I guess it does,’ she said eventually. ‘My job is there, my friends, my …’ She stopped just before saying ‘my boyfriend’.
Aidan didn’t seem to notice, thankfully, instead telling her that Zakynthos had felt like home to him from the first moment he set foot on her, and that he couldn’t really explain why, but that it was just a fact.
‘It came as quite a shock to the ex,’ he added, sucking on his frappé straw and tapping his fingers on the table. It was the first time he’d mentioned her since they’d been at Smugglers’ Cove, and Holly felt a little bit of colour drain from her cheeks.
‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘You don’t have to tell me, sorry.’
‘It’s fine.’ Aidan looked up and met her eyes. ‘I came over here to see my mum and brought her with me, but the two of them didn’t hit it off, so to speak.’
‘Oh?’ Holly thought about the snail she’d flicked down the front of Rupert’s mum’s blouse and grimaced.
‘We were so good together back in Ireland. I loved the bones of that girl and I thought we were strong enough to take on anything together. I never had any doubt in my mind that she was the girl for me, but I did have doubt in my mind about where I wanted us to live. She had trained as a teacher and wanted to do that back home, and I wanted to try and make a life here. My mum hating her guts for no reason just exacerbated things.’
‘What happened?’ Holly asked, watching the muscle that had started to throb in his cheek. Clearly this was still a sensitive subject for him.
‘She left me,’ he said simply, his fingers still tapping away. ‘She kept threatening to do it, but I never believed she would. I thought that love was enough …’ He trailed off.
Holly reached across instinctively to touch his hand, but stopped herself at the last second.
‘I think she assumed I would follow her,’ he went on. ‘And I did think about it, but in the end it wasn’t what I wanted. I would have been settling for a life that wasn’t my first choice, and I wasn’t prepared to do that. I guess she wasn’t either, and that’s fair enough.’
‘Do you still speak to her?’ Holly asked, wondering why she felt so sick at the thought of it.
‘Only very occasionally,’ he shrugged. ‘Learning how not to love someone any more is the hardest thing I think a person can do. It feels wrong in such an inherent way, and I struggled with that for a long time.’
‘When did you break up?’ Holly asked again, her need for facts overwhelming the discomfort at hearing them.
‘Ages ago now.’ That shrug again. ‘More than three years.’
‘And there hasn’t been anyone else since her?’
Aidan glanced at her and grinned. ‘What is this, woman? Are you gonna shine a light in my eyes next?’
‘Sorry,’ Holly said, realising what an enormous hypocrite she was being. She wondered if he hadn’t asked about her love life because he didn’t want to know, or just didn’t care. Neither reason was particularly nice to swallow.
‘Yassou!’
The food had arrived, and with it a cheery, red-cheeked Greek man wearing a tight white shirt and even tighter jeans. He looked to be in his forties, Holly guessed, and he was the first Greek man of that age that she’d met who wasn’t sporting elaborate facial hair.
Aidan stood up to shake the man’s hand, as they clearly knew one another, and then they both turned towards Holly.
‘Holly, this is Alix. He owns this place and knew your aunt well.’
‘Who is she?’ Alix interrupted, beaming at Holly as he placed the plates of food in front of them.
‘My aunt was Sandra,’ she said carefully.
‘Ah, yes. Sandy!’ he announced, still grinning at her. ‘I know her from a very long time ago. Maybe twenty years or more.’
A little spark ignited in Holly’s head.
‘So you knew her when she was young?’ she asked.
‘Yes!’ he clapped his hands. ‘Who is your mother?’
Clearly Alix was one of the more direct Greeks. He reminded her of Nikos and she smiled up at him.
‘My mother was Jenny and—’
‘Jennifer?’ Alix interrupted again, his smile fading for the first time.
‘Yes. She died ten years ago, but—’
‘No!’ Alix looked so genuinely devastated to hear this news that Aidan stood up again and pulled out a chair for him.
‘What happened?’ he asked Holly, making her prickle with discomfort. This man seemed so sweet and she hated having to lie to him, but she had no choice. Not when she’d told Aidan her standard fabricated version of events.
‘A car crash,’ she said quietly, watching Alix’s eyes fill up with tears.
‘I cannot believe it,’ he said, shaking his head in dismay. ‘I have not seen her for many years, but I still think about her. She was so full of life.’
Holly simply nodded, unsure of what to say. The grilled sardines that had smelled so delicious just a few seconds ago were now making her insides grumble with revulsion.
‘Me and your mother, we were …’ Alix paused for a second and looked at Aidan, who nodded. ‘We were close, at one time.’
Holly thought back to the photo she’d discovered. Could Alix be one of the men in that photo? She didn’t think he was, but it had been taken a very long time ago.
‘You look like her,’ he said now, wiping the back of his hairy hand across his eyes. ‘But you also look a little bit Greek too, eh?’
‘I do?’ Now it was Holly’s turn to look at Aidan. He didn’t say anything, just smiled helplessly and picked up his knife and fork.
‘You have the Greek eyes and the Greek hair,’ Alix told her. ‘Who is your father?’
Aidan choked on a piece of steak, causing Alix to leap up and thump him hard in the back. Much coughing and spluttering followed, and Holly took deep breaths to regain her composure.
‘I am sorry to ask all these questions.’ Alix did a little bow in Holly’s direction. ‘I must leave you to enjoy your lunch now, but later we can have a drink for your mother, yes?’
Holly managed to smile. ‘That would be nice.’
She was still shaken up an hour later when he returned with a bottle of red wine and three glasses, and as they sat and toasted Jenny Wright, she examined Alix’s face in detail. He had been close to her mum, he was Greek … Could he be her father? Could this jolly, lithe man be the one who had been missing from her life all these years?
But surely she would know if he was. Surely some sort of deep-rooted biological phenomenon would occur and her brain would somehow just know that they were related. Nothing like that happened, but Alix did keep gazing at her over the top of his glass, his eyes misty as he told them both stories about the younger Sandra and Jenny.
‘Your mother, she like a drink,’ he said at one point, making Holly wince. ‘She could drink me, how you say, under the table?’ He roared with laughter at the memory and Holly politely joined in. Again and again she was struck with the same question: why had her mum left Zakynthos if she had been so happy here?
Another hour passed and another bottle was summoned over. Aidan had stopped after just one glass, but Alix had easily drunk over a bottle to himself. Holly, meanwhile, was starting to feel a bit fuzzy around the edges. The intense heat of the day, combined with the wine and the tiny amount of food she’d managed to consume, was assailing her senses.
She kept feeling Aidan’s eyes on her, and at one point his bare knee brushed against her own under the table, sending a glorious tickle of anticipation up her spine. In her bag on the back of her chair, her phone continued to buzz with unanswered calls from Rupert. Holly knew she was straying into dangerous territory, but she didn’t want to burst this bubble. She wanted to sit here and listen to stories about her mum and aunt and gaze at the view and feel the sun on her skin. She wanted
to shut out the rest of her life and pretend, just for now, that she could stay here in this spot for ever.
Friday, 3 July 1992
Dear Sandy,
It was Holly’s seventh birthday last week. Can you believe how fast time has gone? We had a little party for her in the back garden at Simon’s – jelly, ice cream, the works. It reminded me so much of the parties we had as kids that I half expected you to come strolling through the back gate at any second. I’m sure Holly would have loved to see you. I won’t let her forget her Auntie Sandra, I promise. I’m going to take her to the beach in Brighton soon so she can see the ocean again. She seems to have forgotten that she used to play by one every single day. Do you remember how we used to play? I think about those days all the time. I miss you so much. Please tell us to come and we will.
All my love,
Jen xxx
16
They left Alix just as the light was beginning to fade, his dark head resting on his arms and his gentle snores providing a backing track to the sounds of the waiting staff setting up the restaurant for the evening. Over the past few hours, Holly had come to like him very much, and had decided that he definitely couldn’t be her real father. Yes, they might have similar colouring, and yes, he might have been Jenny’s ex-boyfriend, but she just refused to believe that it would be that simple – that she would walk into a restaurant on a Greek island and find her dad after twenty-nine years. Life just didn’t work that way.
‘Fancy a quick skim before we get on board?’ Aidan joked, as they climbed out of the jeep by the harbour.
‘No, I do not,’ she grinned up at him. His cheeks were slightly pink from the sun and she was reminded of Rupert. He’d got seriously sunburnt after a day on the slopes when they’d been skiing and his cheeks had looked the same, only worse. Holly had enjoyed nursing him back to health with aftersun and sympathy. Poor Rupert, she must call him soon before he got really worried.
Oblivious to her tussle with her conscience, Aidan had bounded ahead and was busy grappling with a rope which was attached to a small fishing boat at one end and a metal stump at the other. The vessel was sitting low in the clear water and bobbing from side to side. Once upon a time this boat must have been blue, but the paint had all but peeled off, with just a few cracked shards remaining along one side. There was only room for about four people to sit comfortably on board, and Holly felt her earlier excitement dissolve into nerves.
‘Come on, you’ll be totally safe with me,’ said Aidan, holding out his hand and then grabbing her under the arms and lifting her clean off the ground and into the boat. Horribly flustered, Holly staggered away from him and almost went over the side.
Aidan narrowed his eyes at her in mock anger and passed her a life jacket. She was sure she looked like a complete idiot in it, but she wasn’t willing to risk going without. She got the impression that Aidan was only wearing his for show, and he quickly got the motor going and steered them away from the shore like a true pro.
After the initial sensation of being in something incredibly fast-moving and close to the surface of the water passed, Holly relaxed and trailed her fingers in the sea. Aidan pointed the boat east and they headed straight for Marathonissi, which seemed to look even more like a giant turtle from this side of the bay.
Like the beach in Kalamaki, this island was a hotspot for turtle nests, and much of it was roped off from the public. Tour boats came over here every day from Laganas, Aidan told her, but there was a strict limit on how long people could linger on the sand. He’d done a lot of work with the local conservation group that looked after the turtles – or Caretta carettas, as they were referred to locally – and it was something the inhabitants of Zakynthos took very seriously. Out of all the Greek islands in this area, this was the one the turtles had chosen to return to year after year – and to Holly, as well as everyone else here, that made the place all the more special.
It took them around twenty minutes to reach the island. When they arrived, Aidan curled up his nose in disgust at a cluster of tourist boats that had formed a circle not far from the sandy shore.
‘They’ve spotted a turtle,’ he explained. ‘The Caretta caretta turtle has to come up to the surface to breathe air every five minutes or so, which means everyone gets to take their photo.’
‘Do you think it upsets them?’ Holly asked, taking in the frown on his face as they passed the boats at a distance.
‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘I just think it’s a bit much when there’s a gang of boats like that. If the turtles become disorientated, then they’ll be distressed. But I suppose if it means people will donate money and not stick their beach umbrellas into the nests, then it’s a good thing.’
Holly nodded in agreement. She’d always felt the same way about zoos – that they were a bit cruel but also necessary. It was far harder to care about something you’d never seen, than an animal you’d been a few inches away from. She was going to make the point to Aidan, but she sensed he’d be against the entire concept of an animal in a cage. Holly had often thought that her mum had turned into a sort of caged animal in the end – unable to leave the house, her wings clipped by years of alcohol abuse. Looking up, she saw a flock of birds soaring high above the island and wondered if there was any way Jenny could be one of them. If you could choose to come back as anything, Jenny would definitely have picked a bird, and it comforted Holly to think of her that way, taking flight and seeking out new adventures.
‘If we head out to sea a bit, we can watch the sun go down,’ Aidan shouted over the roar of the engine. Marathonissi was vanishing rapidly behind them now and all that lay ahead was vast, blue ocean. Holly’s phone had finally stopped vibrating, either from lack of signal or lack of battery, and she tried in vain to shove the guilt away and throw it overboard. She hadn’t done anything wrong, she reassured herself. Yes, she was out in a boat about to watch the sun set with a man she barely knew, but she hadn’t yet crossed that line. Everything would be okay if she could just stay on her side of the fence.
Aidan seemed to know exactly where to go and after a time he killed the engine and dropped the anchor. Two large rocks stood some distance ahead of them in the water, each poking its nose through the surface like an inquisitive mole. The fiery red ball of the sun sat fatly in the sky just above them, dropping a fraction closer to the horizon with the lap of each gentle wave against the side of the boat.
‘I used to bring Sandra out here sometimes,’ Aidan said, removing his life jacket and propping it behind his back like a cushion. ‘She was a very good listener, your aunt, and very patient with me when I was going through all my break-up nonsense.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t nonsense,’ Holly said. The words that Aidan had used to describe how he felt earlier had really stayed with her. The idea of having to learn not to love somebody was heartbreaking, but hadn’t she been doing the exact same thing ever since Jenny died?
‘I think she’d been through some heartbreak of her own,’ he said carefully. ‘She understood how wretched I was feeling and she never lied.’
‘Lied about what?’ Holly was intrigued.
‘You know how some people will always just tell you what they think you need to hear, like, “Don’t worry, old chap, plenty more fish in the sea,” and all that crap?’
‘I don’t think anyone has used the words “old chap” since Dickensian times,’ Holly giggled. ‘But yes, I get what you mean. I think people get fed up of other people’s grief and misery. After a while it’s just easier to pretend that you’re all right, so as not to bear the weight of their guilt on top of your own sadness.’
Aidan was looking at her intently now, and his face was so close that she could have counted his eyelashes if she’d wanted to.
‘Is that what you do, Holly?’ he asked. ‘Do you pretend that everything is okay?’
‘Sometimes,’ she shrugged, amazed at how easily she was admitting all this. ‘For a time it’s all I did. It helped me to survive after I l
ost my mum. I just played a part of someone who was coping, but inside I was …’
She had to stop there before her voice betrayed her, and Aidan fell silent too. The sun was almost down and the sky was transforming into a riot of gold, red and amber. The surface of the water looked like a rippling sheet of bronze, freshly baked and ready to be twisted and shaped into something else, something beautiful.
‘You can’t put a time frame on these sorts of things,’ he said gently. ‘Heartbreak, grief, sadness – they all cut their own shape into you. Wanting to feel better is just the beginning – it can take a lifetime to recover. In fact, I think some people never do. I don’t think Sandra ever did.’
Holly thought about the letter, about what her aunt had said about not being deserving. Had Sandra done something so awful to Jenny that it had severed the bond between them for good? Surely that was the answer. But what? She opened her mouth to ask Aidan, but quickly shut it again. If he knew what had happened, then he would have told her already – of that she was sure. Despite not knowing him very well, she trusted him. Her instincts were telling her that he was a good guy, and for now she was happy to listen to them.
‘I hope I do,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the sun. It was half-obscured by the ocean now and burning a bright, angry red.
Aidan sat up and put a big, warm hand on her shoulder. ‘For ever is a long time,’ he said, squeezing her muscle with his fingers. ‘You have to want to be happy, though. I get the impression that you’re far too hard on yourself. You don’t give yourself enough credit.’
There he went again, looking right through her and seeing the bits she’d hidden the deepest.
‘What happened with your mum, it wasn’t your fault. You have to know that.’
But it had been her fault, to a certain extent. If she had been less of a disappointment, less of a burden, then maybe her mum would have found the strength to get better. If she hadn’t gone to college on that day, if she’d been there to clear her mum’s airway before it was too late. If, if, if … The word stabbed at Holly like a knife, making her double over. She took her eyes off the sun and stared down at her feet in the bottom of the boat. Aidan said nothing, just kept scrunching his fingers against her shoulder until she felt herself start to relax. By the time she looked up again at the horizon, it was pitch black.
My Map of You Page 15