My Map of You (6 page)

‘See you soon, darling,' came the reply. ‘Pop in any time.'

It was only as she started walking back up the hill that Holly realised just how drunk she was. The carrier bag containing her now-tepid yoghurts banged against her bare shins as she half-trudged, half-stumbled back towards the house. There was now a jeep parked right next to the path, and Holly careered into it sideways as she attempted to leap over the low wall.

‘Bugger,' she giggled, doing her best to put the wing mirror back in place. Opening the door a few minutes
later, she realised she'd not only left all the lights on, but that the window in the kitchen was open too. Cursing herself for not unpacking earlier, she unzipped her case and rifled through her neatly rolled clothes until she found Rupert's old university T-shirt. He'd slipped it into her suitcase that morning and told her to sleep in it.

‘It's the second-best thing to me being there with you.'

Rupert! ‘Bugger,' she swore for the second time. She'd completely forgotten to text him to tell him she'd arrived. She was officially the worst girlfriend in the world. Fishing her phone out of her bag as she scrambled up the stairs, Holly found the screen black. With the wine sloshing about in her empty stomach, the prospect of digging around in her case for her phone charger was akin to tackling the trek to Everest base camp in nothing but a bikini – it would have to wait until the morning.

Ten minutes later, with a blissfully empty bladder and a scratchy but clean-looking blanket that she'd discovered in one of the cupboards on the landing, Holly clambered on to the sofa and closed her eyes. For a few bleary seconds, she was vaguely aware of a buzzing in her ears. Then she passed out.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Oh God,
someone was trying to break down the door and kill her.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Okay, so maybe they were just knocking. Groaning, Holly stood up and promptly stubbed her toe on the leg of the coffee table.

‘Shitting bastard!' she yelled.

The knocking stopped.

Scooping up the blanket to cover her bottom half, Holly stomped over to the front door and flung it open with a loud crash. Standing on the threshold, a set of keys dangling from one finger and a wry grin on his face, stood what could only be described as a tall, dark, handsome stranger.

‘Were you talking to me?' he asked, his Irish accent immediately apparent.

‘What? No!' Holly snapped, feeling indignant.

‘So you don't think I'm a, what was it, “shitting bastard”?' He was clearly mocking her now, and Holly was horribly aware of her dry mouth and the fact that she hadn't removed yesterday's make-up before she'd passed out.

‘I stubbed my toe,' she told him, rather begrudgingly. They both glanced down at the same time, but Holly's feet were obscured by the blanket.

‘You must be Holly?' He was wearing a red T-shirt with a cluster of holes in the front, a pair of navy shorts and very beaten-up-looking flip-flops.

‘That's right. Are you Aidan?'

If he was surprised that she knew his name, he didn't show it, just gave a brief nod. Holly shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She didn't like the way this man was looking at her – he was clearly amused by her bedraggled appearance. The fact that he was undeniably good-looking was beside the point.

‘The man in the shop mentioned you,' she added, pulling the blanket tighter.

Aidan smiled. ‘Kostas?'

It was Holly's turn to nod. She decided not to tell him what Annie had said.

‘I came round last night,' he told her now. ‘I thought you were here, given that all the lights were on.'

Holly brought her hand up to scratch her face, realising as she did so that a cluster of bites had appeared on her cheek.

‘The mozzies are attracted to the light at night,' he continued, raising an eyebrow as she snatched her hand away. God, he was so infuriating. She couldn't help picturing how awful she must look, with last night's mascara crusted on her eyelids, mosquito bites all over her face and the slept-in hair of a Highland goat.

Aidan held out the keys. ‘These are yours. Sandy liked me having a spare set, just in case, but now that you're here …' he trailed off. ‘Are you running a bath?'

‘What?' Holly gaped at him. ‘No. Why?'

‘Can't you hear that?' He stepped past her and headed
towards the stairs. Holly followed him, limping slightly on her still throbbing toe. They stood there in silence, and sure enough, there was a persistent dripping sound coming from somewhere upstairs. Aidan headed up without asking, leaving Holly to hobble indignantly after him.

‘Ah …' his voice filtered out from inside the bathroom. ‘Nobody warned you about the Greek plumbing system, did they?'

‘What do you me— Oh.' Holly recoiled in horror as she took in the scene of devastation on the other side of the door. The toilet, which she'd only used twice since arriving, was full to the brim with the same murky water that was covering the floor, and there were a few sheets of disintegrating toilet paper floating about on the tide.

‘You can't flush toilet paper over here,' Aidan told her. He managed to keep his voice very matter-of-fact, which was impressive given the circumstances.

Holly found that she had lost the power of speech, so when he told her that he was nipping back next door to get the tools necessary to unblock her U-bend, she merely nodded at him stupidly. As soon as she heard his feet on the stairs, Holly rushed into the spare bedroom and slammed the door behind her. The mirror on the wall confirmed her worst fears: she really did look like a mountain goat – one that had failed to find its way around the forty-five or so hedges in its path. Then again, Aidan would probably remember the bathroom floor more than he would the state of her face.

Rooted to the spot by the wet-cement effect of total and utter humiliation, Holly listened as Aidan made his way back into the bathroom, clanking a bit this time with
what she assumed must be some sort of toolbox. He definitely had the look of a man that would have a proper toolbox – and one that he would actually use, rather than the smart-looking one wrapped in cellophane that Rupert kept in the cupboard under his kitchen sink.

‘Holly?' Oh God, he was calling for her. With some effort, she unglued her bare feet from the tiled floor and tiptoed back to the bathroom doorway. She was still wearing Rupert's T-shirt and the blanket, which she snatched up away from the rancid water.

‘Do you have a bucket?' he asked. He was down on all fours now, one gloved hand poised and ready to plunge.

‘I … Um … I don't know,' Holly stuttered. Why was she behaving like such a moron? ‘I'll go and check,' she added quickly, seeing a frown begin to form on his face. Once downstairs, she discovered a bucket, bleach and a whole heap of sponges and cloths stuffed into a cupboard in the kitchen. Pausing at her suitcase to pull on a pair of denim shorts, she took the whole lot up to the bathroom and gingerly placed them on the floor next to where Aidan was now rummaging about in the toilet. He didn't need any help, he told her, but a cup of tea would be nice.

Thank God she'd picked up some milk the night before, she thought, carefully decanting water from the large bottle in the fridge into the kettle and readying two mugs that she'd found on a low shelf beside the cooker. While the kettle chugged away, Holly ran a brush through her hair and cleaned her teeth over the sink. Her hands were still shaking when she poured out the boiling water.

As she waited for Aidan to reappear, Holly spotted her phone on the coffee table and realised with a pang that
she still hadn't sent a message to Rupert. She wondered what would have happened if he had been here with her when the toilet decided to explode. The thought of Rupert down on his hands and knees, elbow-deep in sewage, was so absurd that Holly found herself laughing out loud.

‘Glad you see the funny side.'

It was Aidan, coming down the stairs looking slightly more flustered and a lot damper than he had before.

‘I wasn't laughing at … I was just … Here you go.' Holly held out his mug.

He took a sip, staring at her over the rim. ‘This is a good cup of tea. It's the one thing the Greeks are terrible at, making tea. Their coffee is probably the best in the world, but their tea tastes like horse piss.'

‘Thank you for fixing the, erm, problem in the bathroom.' Holly flushed crimson.

‘No trouble,' he told her. He was drinking his tea very quickly. The poor man must be desperate to get away from her. Holly knew she should make small talk, ask him about himself or remark on the weather, but it was hard to concentrate on chit-chat with a man so blatantly good-looking. Even as the thought entered her head, she felt guilty. Plus, there was something about Aidan that made her feel on edge. When he looked at her, she felt like he could see right through all the body armour she'd painstakingly bolted around herself. That was ridiculous, though – he'd only just met her. She must simply be feeling vulnerable because he'd caught her looking so utterly hideous.

‘So,' he said eventually. ‘When was the last time you spoke to your Auntie Sandra?'

Holly gulped. Should she lie? Somehow she knew that Aidan wouldn't fall for it. ‘I never met her,' she told him, taking an aggressive swig of tea and almost choking as the scalding liquid hit the back of her throat. ‘I didn't even know she existed until about a week ago.'

For the first time since she'd opened the door to him, Aidan seemed to lose a layer of his unflappable cool. He was scrutinising her now with what felt like distrust. ‘But you are her niece, right? You are Holly?'

‘Apparently, I am,' she replied. He may have unblocked her loo, but there was no way she was ready to tell him all about her family history.

‘She told me that she was leaving this place to you,' Aidan continued, placing his mug carefully on the table. ‘As soon as she found out about the cancer, she knew exactly who was going to get the house: it was always going to be you.'

Holly fiddled with the frayed bottom of her shorts and fought the tears that had inexplicably welled up at his words. So it had been cancer that had taken away her aunt. Clearly Aidan assumed that she already knew all about it, but she was damned if she was going to let him know just how much his accidental bombshell had affected her. She'd spent years keeping her true emotions well hidden, even from those she felt closest to, and she'd only just met this man. Sniffing loudly and giving a shrug, she snapped, ‘Listen, I'm just here to clear this place out and sell it. I don't know why Sandra left me her house – and I don't care, either.'

Aidan flinched as though he'd been slapped. ‘Wow, you
don't mince your words, do you? I'm glad Sandy isn't here to see this.'

Ouch, that hurt. Holly glared at him for a moment while she tried to quell the ugly froth of anger that she could feel rising up inside her chest. The last thing she wanted was to give in to her horrible, irrational rage – the same rage that she'd been struggling to control since losing her mum.

‘Listen, I don't care what you think of me,' she told him calmly. ‘I don't even know who you are. You come round here at the crack of dawn, banging on the door like a madman, mocking me—'

‘You swore at
me
!' he interrupted.

‘I swore at the bloody table!' she argued.

‘And I fixed your fecking toilet!' he said, his voice rising an octave.

Infuriatingly, he then seemed to steady himself and even smiled again, although not at Holly. Retrieving the keys from the pocket of his shorts, Aidan stared at her for a few seconds before throwing them down on to the table, where they slid along to the vase of flowers and stopped with a soft clunk. As the front door clicked shut behind him, Holly realised with dismay that it must have been him who put the flowers there in the first place – and now he thought she was a complete cow.

The tears were threatening to fall now, but that only hardened Holly's resolve not to care. It didn't matter what Aidan thought of her. In a matter of weeks, she'd be back in London, having sold this weird mausoleum, and she could forget all about Sandra
and
Aidan.

He had unnerved her, though, the way he'd made her anger almost come to the surface like that. She'd been with Rupert for almost a year and he'd never seen even a hint of her bad temper. Whenever Holly felt even a rumbling of that side of her start to appear, she always made an excuse to be by herself, whether it was an afternoon run, or a trip to the local shop. She was afraid of what would happen if she ever let herself ride the waves of that anger – and with Aidan, for the first time since she was a teenager, she'd almost lost control of herself.

Nope, he was definitely bad news. She would have to do everything in her power to avoid him for the rest of her trip.