My Map of You (28 page)

So, there it was. Dennis, the man in that photo she'd found, the same man who Kostas had informed her was ‘with Sandra'. He was her father.

For a long time, Holly just sat on the rug, the letter in her hands, her tears causing the ink to run into untidy streaks down the page. There was so much to take in. Jenny had slept with her own twin sister's boyfriend and she, Holly, had been the result. She was the reason they had stopped speaking to each other. This was what her mum must have meant when she told Holly that she should have given her up. And the worst thing of all – Holly had followed in her mum's footsteps and done exactly the same thing. She'd become a cheat. All these years she'd been promising herself that she would be nothing like her mum, and she'd gone and turned into her without even noticing. What Sandra had written about Jenny putting up a protective shield around herself had made Holly wince with recognition. And she knew what it was to be crippled by grief too – but was it reason enough to behave the way Jenny had?

She forced herself to remember what she'd been like in the weeks and months after Jenny's death. She'd be doing her best to go about her business as usual, then she'd suddenly be hit by a tidal wave of hopelessness and anger. Sometimes the pain was so acute that it left her gasping for breath at the side of the road. She could very easily believe that grief on that level could make a person do anything. Certainly do anything they could to escape the agony. Poor Jenny, and poor Sandra too. Once that sadness had got under their skin, they were both lost.

The truth that she had an actual, real, presumably still-living father was slowly working its way through Holly's senses. The shock of the revelation was still resonating, but she could sense a surge of emotion brewing in her chest. She'd looked at that photo so many times and never made the connection – never even questioned it. She'd always held on to a fairy-tale belief that she'd know her dad the second she saw him. She'd imagined walking past him in the street or sitting opposite him on the tube. Now all she felt was confused, upset, and very, very angry.

She read her Aunt Sandra's letter again, sniffing away her tears and wiping them angrily from her cheeks. It was implied that her dad had known about her, but he too had chosen not to pursue any sort of relationship with her. Even if her mum had fled Greece, he could have tried. Or perhaps he had. Maybe he had come all the way to their door only to be turned away. It seemed unlikely, but then so did the idea of finding out you had a father in a dusty old box of postcards. At this moment in time, Holly believed that literally anything could be possible. What she needed was answers. She needed to find Dennis and
ask him what happened that summer. Ask him why he'd abandoned her. But where the hell was she even meant to start?

When the knocking started downstairs, it made Holly jump so violently that she cracked her elbow on the bedframe. It was loud and insistent, but she didn't move. Whoever it was, she didn't want to see them.

‘HOLLY!' Aidan's voice was muffled, but he sounded upset. So what? He could sod off.

‘HOLLY! You really need to let me in!'

She didn't move. The sunlight shining in through the window was illuminating the cloud of dust she'd disturbed by unearthing the box, and she watched as the particles danced and dived around each other.

‘HOLLY, PLEASE!'

Bloody hell, what was his problem?

Holly stayed put, even when she heard a key in the lock and the sound of running feet on the stairs. Aidan appeared in the bedroom doorway a second later, his cheeks flushed and a bunch of keys in his hand. A quick scan of the room caused him to look momentarily confused, and then he beckoned to her.

‘Come on, we need to go.'

‘Go where?'

Aidan sighed and crouched down on his haunches.

‘To the hospital.'

‘What? Why?' She was doing her best to remain calm, but the intensity in his eyes was scaring her.

‘It's …' He paused. For a few seconds he stared down at the floor, at the pile of postcards, and then he looked right at her.

‘It's your dad. He's had a heart attack. You need to come now.'

He was already up on his feet again, but Holly found she couldn't move.

‘What the hell do you mean?' she snapped, finding her voice. ‘I only found out who my dad was myself a few minutes ago.'

‘Holly.' Aidan gripped the door handle. ‘Trust me, we have to go. There's no time for a discussion about it.'

When she didn't move, he reached down and grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her up on to her feet.

‘Come on, I'll drive you.'

‘Get off!' She yanked her hand away as if he'd branded it. ‘I'm not going anywhere with you.' The urge to cry again was almost overwhelming, but she was determined not to let Aidan see her weak side ever again.

He took a deep breath and glared at her. She was still holding the letter Sandra had written and her face was a mess of red blotches and smudged mascara.

‘Holly,' he said again, moving as close to her as he dared. ‘You have to come and see Dennis. I don't want it to be too late.'

Dennis? So, Aidan knew who her dad was. Too stunned by this information to reply and too exhausted to put up any more of a fight, Holly let him lead her down the stairs and out to his jeep.

Aidan
drove dangerously fast all the way to the hospital, narrowly avoiding clusters of tourists and parked cars. Holly sat mutely beside him, wincing every now and then at the near misses but refusing to say a word – she didn't trust herself to say anything, such was her confusion and anger. The same thought was repeating itself over and over in her mind:
My father is Sandra's ex, Dennis. He is in hospital. Aidan knows who he is.

But
how
did Aidan know? Had he found the letter before her and worked it out? Had he known all along? And if so, why the hell hadn't he told her?

Even after the arrival of Clara and the horrible way he'd been behaving towards her ever since, Holly still refused to believe that he was capable of keeping such a big secret from her. She trusted him. He was one of the only people she'd ever really trusted. He couldn't and wouldn't have done that to her, would he?

Zakynthos hospital turned out to be a large rectangular building, with a yellow and terracotta paint job that did little to detract from its bulky, blocky ugliness. Holly's first thought as Aidan screeched to a halt across two parking spaces was relief that he hadn't actually crashed the jeep on the way. This didn't look like the sort of place where you'd want to end up after an accident.

While the inside was clean enough, the grey plastic
chairs in the downstairs waiting room looked faded and the green walls dull, as if the sunlight had long ago robbed them of any vibrancy. Aidan was babbling away in Greek to the woman behind the reception desk, and soon he was leading Holly towards a wide bank of stairs.

He'd barely looked at her since they left the house, but Holly could tell that he was concerned. A muscle twitched continually in his cheek and his hair was sticking up in all directions where he kept running an agitated hand through it. Dark patches had also formed under his arms and in the groove of his back, lending an almost tie-dye effect to his goat-eaten T-shirt. Holly noticed all this, but couldn't really process it. The notion that she might soon see her real father in the flesh for the first time had stolen away all rational thinking and replaced it with an intense dread.

‘Aidan.'

A dark-haired woman was rushing down the corridor towards them, fresh tears all over her face. She immediately began speaking in Greek, only pausing to look over his shoulder to where Holly was cowering, unsure of what to do. The woman was clearly distraught, and Aidan put his arms around her and forced her into a reluctant embrace.

‘He's out of immediate danger,' he said in English, turning to Holly. ‘They got here in time.'

She nodded, still mute. The woman pulled her face away from Aidan's chest and stole another look at her. There was something in her eyes that Holly couldn't quite place. Not mistrust, exactly, more like curiosity. After eyeing Holly up and down, she stepped back and beckoned to her and Aidan that they should follow her back
along the green passageway. As they neared an open doorway, Holly noticed a young girl sitting on another sad-looking chair that had been left outside. She had a sullen expression on her face and was swinging her legs underneath the seat. As she looked up, Holly was hit with a punch of recognition. She'd seen this little face before, at the taverna above the beautiful cove in Porto Limnionas, but the first time it had been smiling and happy and covered in smears of chocolate ice cream.

‘This is Paloma,' Aidan said, motioning towards the older woman. Holly remembered the name – Paloma was the lady who worked with him in the clinic. Up close, she looked a lot younger than her clothes and grey-streaked hair had led Holly to believe. She looked so much like the little girl sitting in the chair that she could only be her mother.

‘Yassou,'
she muttered, trying her best to smile.

Paloma looked her up and down again and sniffed, before saying something in Greek to Aidan. The little girl stopped swinging her legs and leaned around her mother to peer at Holly, her deep-set eyes wide beneath her dark fringe. Holly wondered if she too remembered that they had already met one another.

‘Paloma only found out about you a few weeks ago,' Aidan said now. He still wasn't quite meeting her eyes.

‘Well, tell her that I only found out about
her
a few moments ago,' she snapped, finally finding her voice. ‘And that I don't even know who
she
is, despite everyone else apparently knowing everything about me.' She'd meant that last part to sting him, and it worked. Aidan flinched as if she'd slapped him.

‘I know this is hard for you,' he started, but she held up her hand.

‘You don't know me at all,' she stated. ‘Don't you
dare
presume to know how I'm feeling. Not now, not ever.'

‘Paloma is Dennis' wife,' he told her, ignoring the outburst. ‘And this is their daughter, Maria.'

The little girl, who was apparently her half-sister, braved a smile and Holly felt her anger subside a fraction. It was then that she realised, with an increasingly frantic hammering of her heart, that she had probably seen her dad before too – she'd seen him more than once. She couldn't blame Aidan for the first of those encounters at Porto Limnionas, when Dennis had stared at her across the banks of tables and she'd assumed, ridiculously, that he was checking her out. But the second, when the two men had stood by the fishing boat in Mikro Nissi and watched her, was all on him. Just what the hell had he been playing at?

A doctor appeared just as the silence was becoming uncomfortable and ushered Paloma and Aidan inside, shutting the door behind them and leaving Holly in the putrid green corridor with Maria. For a few seconds, they just looked at each other, and then Maria began to cry. Her sobs were so loud and so heart-wrenching that Holly found herself kneeling down and taking her hands. Maria looked at her beseechingly and sobbed a few jumbled words at her in Greek. Her nose was running and there were two streaks of clean skin where her tears had made a path through the dirt on each of her cheeks. At a loss as to how to tell her that everything would be okay, Holly merely reached up and stroked the wet hair off her
half-sister's face. She had the same dark, slightly almond-shaped eyes as Holly.

Despite the fact that they were total strangers, Maria clutched Holly against her as if she was the most precious person in the world, and Holly hugged her right back just as tight. For a few minutes, as she knelt there on the cold floor, Holly stopped worrying about what was to come next. All that mattered was Maria, her very own sister. Now that she had her, Holly felt as if she was invincible. She was not alone in the world after all, and the realisation was both startling and magical. It was as if she'd made a wish and had it granted, without even knowing that she'd made one in the first place.

‘Holly?'

It was Aidan, his touch gentle on her shoulder.

‘Dennis is stable and you can see him if you want to.'

Maria had finally stopped crying, but Holly took her time disentangling herself from the little girl's clinging arms. Aidan's eyes were shining and he looked to Holly as if he'd aged five years in the last half an hour. His freckly skin bore a grey tinge and his shoulders were uncharacteristically hunched.

‘You look wretched,' she told him matter-of-factly, giving Maria's little hand a final squeeze before letting it drop. Paloma had joined them and was staring unashamedly at Holly again, her blatant curiosity as clear as the cloudless sky outside.

‘Shall we get this over with then?' Holly said, addressing both of them.

‘Are you sure you're ready?' Aidan asked.

Was he insane?

‘No. I'm not sure,' she replied, growing angry again. ‘But given as how you stormed into my house and ordered me down here, I don't think I have a choice in the matter now, do I?'

He nodded, looking sheepish. Holly sneaked a last look down at Maria, and then followed Aidan into the room and towards the figure under the blankets.