Page 61 of Going Solo (The Brent Boys #2)

Chapter Thirty-Five

S omething wet and slimy landed on my face, waking me from a deep and restful sleep. I slapped my hand to my cheek, wiping away some kind of goo. Confused, I opened my eyes slowly against the blistering white light of the morning.

“Holy shit, that’s a cow!” I said, scrambling across to the far end of the bed. The huge caramel-coloured animal had stuck its entire head through the open window above the bed and was stood there, chewing and drooling and having a good peek. Cole’s bare round arse, uncovered when I took the bedding with me, slowly disappeared underneath him as he rolled over. The splendid nakedness of him was breathtaking. You could have painted this scene, stuck it on the wall in the National Gallery, and claimed it was some obscure Greek myth.

“Morning, Genevieve,” Cole said, reaching a hand up and scratching the gigantic beast under its chin.

“ This is Genevieve?”

“She most certainly is.” Cole stretched himself out, letting every muscle in his body tense, his plump morning cock rolling from side to side as he yawned.

“You wrote that whole song about a cow ?”

“I’ll have you know, she’s an incredibly special cow.”

“How?”

“For starters, she could have paid for the big house ten times over.” Cole reached a hand down to scoop up his underpants. “She’s the second-richest cow in England.”

“Second?”

“After Felicity.”

“Fair.”

“And I raised Genevieve myself,” he said, hooking the pants over his feet and sliding them up his legs. “Her mum died when she was born, and I bottle-fed her from day one.”

Cole tucked everything neatly away, then got up onto his knees and buried his face in the cow’s neck, scratching her all over her head. I don’t speak cow, but I knew exactly what it felt like to have Cole Kennedy’s hands all over your body. Genevieve’s head whipped around in ecstasy, her horns slicing through the air. I was well beyond their reach, but I crept further back. Cole didn’t seem bothered at all. Slobber flew everywhere. I grabbed my underpants from the floor and put them on before drool could land on them.

“ Waking up to your sad brown eyes ,” I said, recalling the lyrics to Cole’s biggest hit. “ Making time for long goodbyes. Oh, Genevieve, you know I have to leave. Oh, Genevieve, you know I have to leave. Oh, Genevieve, I wish I could stay. But life don’t work that way .” I laughed. “I can’t believe you wrote that song about leaving your cow!”

“Don’t listen to him, Genevieve, he’s jealous.”

“How have you never told this story in public before? All those chat shows. This never came up.”

“I would never kiss and tell,” Cole said.

I shook my head. “Even Graham Norton didn’t get this story out of you.”

“That song means too much to too many people.”

I thought of Iona, in hospital in Glasgow, and wondered how she was doing.

“I’m going to make coffee now, Genevieve,” Cole said. “It’s lovely to see you. Thanks for coming to say hello. I love you!”

The cow shuffled her rear end around to the side, swung her head out of the window, and walked away. Cole shut the windows and tottered across the bed towards me on his knees.

“Shall I make coffee?” he said, reaching his arms out to wrap me up in a hug. “Or do you have something else you need besides caffeine?”

My hand found his chest, stopping him in his tracks. “Not until you’ve had a shower.”

Twenty minutes later, I was wandering around Cole’s kitchen in someone else’s terry bathrobe, fighting with the Nespresso machine, when Cole wandered in, still towelling water out of his hair. He wore nothing but old torn jeans, steam still rising from his skin.

“Good morning, beautiful,” he said, pulling me into him and planting a kiss on my lips. “Are you ready for the invasion?”

“Invasion?”

Two tiny raven-haired children burst into the kitchen, screaming for their Uncle Cole. A minute later—as Cole stomped around the kitchen pretending to be a giant, with one niece wrapped around his leg and the other around his arm, to squeals of delight—the front door opened again and their mother, a petite Filipina woman, stumbled in.

“Sorry, Cole,” she said, out of breath. “I told them not until ten o’clock because Uncle Cole is sleeping. One minute they were hypnotised by Peppa Pig, the next the little fuckers had made a bid for freed—” She noticed me and stopped mid-sentence, wide-eyed. “Fuck me with a banister brush, it really is you. Fiona said you were here, but I didn’t belie?—”

“Juney, this is Toby,” Cole said, still stomping around with children dripping off him. “Tobes, this is my sister-in-law, June. Tully’s wife. And these brave, giant-slaying Lilliputians are Althea”—he shook his arm—“and Andrea”—he shook his leg. The children squealed and giggled.

June threw her arms around me. “You took your bloody time, but we’re glad to finally have you here.” Then she squeezed me tight and whispered in my ear, so Cole couldn’t hear. “He is a very gentle boy, and he’s been through a lot. If you hurt him, I will gut you like a pig. If you try to hide, I will track you down. I will find you. I will stop at nothing. Nowhere will be safe. Are we clear?”

I choked on my reply. “Clear.”

“Good boy.” She patted my back and released me, smiling like she wasn’t a trained assassin.

“Coffee?” I offered.

Over the course of the day, I met Cole’s brother, Tully, and his dad, Andy. After June, I hadn’t been sure what to expect. These people must have hated me for years, thinking I’d betrayed Cole’s confidence and leaked our texts. But their welcome was warm and unconditional. I felt not only like I was being adopted into the family, but like they already considered me a part of it.

At lunch, June made a stack of cold sandwiches, Tully and Andy came in from the fields, and everyone sat around the table, catching up on everyone’s news. Andy had been asked to stand for the district council. June had been co-opted onto the committee of the twins’ playgroup. Tully was having trouble fixing “the big windmill” and had to go into town for parts. Cole listened intently to all of it and, when June asked him how the tour was going, volunteered a summary as casual as if she’d asked him how his studies were going. I waited for Cole to tell his family the producers had located his birth mother, but he said nothing. I exchanged glances with him, mouthing the word “WebFlix,” but Cole shook his head.

Cole offered to help Tully fix the windmill, so when he came back from town, we went with him to the dam. It was a glorious, sunny afternoon. Cole was in his element—shoes off, stripped to the waist, climbing up and down the tower, shouting instructions back and forth to Tully. I lay in the long grass, wishing my phone had reception and sneaking photos of the world’s sexiest windmill mechanic. When the windmill was finally fixed and the tether released to let the blades turn, the water started pumping, and the brothers high-fived like teenage boys.

“You coming?” Tully asked, when the tools were packed up in the truck.

“I think we’ll hang here for a bit,” Cole said. “Might have a swim.”

Tully’s eyebrows went up. “No shagging in the water. Some of us have to drink that.”

Cole laughed. I blushed. As he took off, Tully shouted back: “Don’t forget you’re on dairy duty this afternoon. Bring the girls up with you for five o’clock.”

“The girls?” I said as the truck kicked up dust. “Aren’t the twins a bit young to?—”

“The cows,” Cole said.

* * *

We lay back in the grass, exhausted, our bodies tangled up in each other, naked as the day we were born. Insects hopped, flitted, and buzzed around us. The breeze tickled our skin, drying the stickiness that was slicked across our stomachs. I gently ran my fingers through Cole’s hair, brushing it back behind his ear.

“Why didn’t you tell everyone you’ve found your birth mum?” I asked.

Cole sighed and nodded towards the water. “We should rinse off.”

Clearly, I wasn’t getting an answer.

Cole stood, the sun shining on the magnificent nakedness of his taut, lean muscles. He held out a hand for me.

“Come on. Wash with me.”

“I thought Tully said?—”

“It’s fine! Do you know what the ducks do in that water?”

Cole waggled his hand. I shook my head. “Not until I know what the ducks do in that water.”

Cole laughed, turned around, and walked into the water. His arse was spectacular in the sunlight. His buttocks bobbed against the surface like a sexy floatation device, and I wanted to cling onto it like I was Kate Winslet and in Titanic . I watched Cole washing himself, rinsing away the evidence of the afternoon’s exertions. The water glistened as it ran down his body. You could paint this and hang it in the National Gallery, too, I thought. But the real prize was not the aesthetic beauty of the man in front of me but the privilege of seeing this version of him. This wasn’t Cole the pop star, Cole the showman, or even the Cole that secretly visited hospitals in his spare time. This farm was the one place where even Cole let Cole be Cole. This was his happy place, the place he knew he absolutely belonged. I recognised it because the salon was that place for me. It was the place where I grew up, where I was most comfortable, my most complete self, my most honest self. I understood why Cole had done so much to keep the farm private and to cling to his childhood home. I was honoured to be here. I stood and joined him in the water.

Cole started singing “The Flame.” Softly, at first, but as I added the harmonies, he grew louder. He stood in the shallows, water up to his thighs, sun shining on his magnificent body. He held out a hand, encouraging me to come deeper. I reached for it, and he guided me towards him. We held each other, naked in the water, with the summer sun beating down on us.

* * *

The dairy smelt like someone had made a smoothie using yogurt that had been left in the fridge for a week too long, and poop that had been left in the cow for a week too long. Cole told me the cows that looked like Genevieve were Jerseys and the black-and-white ones were Holsteins. Andy opened the dairy gate, and the cows wandered in. A dozen at a time would line up along each side of the shed and put their heads down to enjoy their dinner. Cole ran up and down the lines, washing the cows’ udders with a rag, and Andy ran along after him, putting on the “teat cups” that would extract the milk. I’m not going to lie, they looked like four Fleshlights strapped to a Pokémon ball by hosepipe. They bounced up and down on the cows’ nipples as the suction turned on and off, and you could watch the milk spurt into the Pokémon ball through the little round window. How had no one told the enterprising filmmakers from Raging Stallion about this?

After a while, Andy started singing “Hit the Road Jack,” the old Ray Charles song. It was wonderful to watch Cole and his dad, bouncing on their heels to the music in their heads. It took me a shamefully long time to realise it, but the percussive sound of the milking machine provided the perfect beat for the song. I pointed this out to Cole.

“Eighty-six beats per minute, but with the suction cycle it sounds like a hundred and seventy-two beats,” he said, over the sound of the machine. “Watch this.” Cole stuck a finger in the air and said loudly: “One shot!”

Andy replied, call-and-response-style, with the opening lines to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself”—and father and son bounced around the dairy in perfect unison, rapping together. I couldn’t believe it. I’d expect it from Cole, maybe, but Andy knew every word to the whole song. I sat on a stool in the corner, watching father and son singing and working together, absolutely in sync. I wondered how Cole’s news would change their relationship and, suddenly, understood why Cole hadn’t said anything at lunch. He needed this—this touchstone moment that symbolised being at home. He needed this time with his dad. One more afternoon of togetherness before sharing the news that he’d always feared might upset his parents and change his relationship with them forever.

* * *

That evening, Cole and I had dinner with the family up the big house. June put the kids to bed, and we all sat on the couch watching Britain’s Cake Off , which was always a bit weird for me because the host, Raluca, had hosted Pop Review before me. The judges were sampling the contestant’s Battenbergs when Cole lifted my hand to his mouth, kissed it, stood up, and disappeared from the room. I looked at Fiona, wondering what was going on. She shook her head gently. A moment later, Cole reappeared in the doorway with a bottle of liquor. I looked at Fiona again, more panicked this time. She shook her head again.

“Dad,” Cole said. “You got a minute?”

Everyone looked at Andy. Andy looked up at his son, then at the bottle. He took a deep breath, but his eyes shone with nothing but love and compassion.

“Bad enough to pull out your mum’s bottle of Teeling single malt,” Andy said, leveraging himself out of his armchair. “It must be serious.”

Cole turned and walked up the hall. As Andy followed him, he said: “If you’ve got that boy pregnant, Cole, so help me God…”

They’d been gone about half an hour when my phone pinged.

Denzil: Hey lovebirds. Deal with Sentinel looking shaky. Could use your help.

Toby: If this is wot I think it is the answer is no! We r not going public. Eva.

Denzil: Just one little picture together. Come on. He’s right there. Your phone is already in your hand. We need the publicity, bruv.

Toby: U dont own my private life. Im doing my bit.

Denzil: Big talk from an employee who’s currently absent without leave, Toby. Help a brother out?

I turned my phone off. I was starting to prefer being out in the fields, where there was no phone reception and Denzil couldn’t find me.

It was another hour and a half before Andy and Cole reappeared in the living room doorway, both red-eyed, Andy swaying lightly on his feet.

Later that night, back at the cottage, Cole snuggled in beside me in the bed and coiled his body around mine. There was no smell of alcohol on him.

“I take it you told him they found your birth parents,” I said.

I felt Cole nod against the pillow.

“How’d it go?”

“Surprisingly well.” Cole stifled a yawn. “He didn’t even bat an eyelid.”

I kissed him on the forehead. “You were gone a long time. I was worried.”

“We had a lot to talk about,” Cole said, one finger circling my nipple absently.

“Orla?”

“Mum. You. My birth parents. We had a lot to say. Maybe we should have said some of those things to each other many years ago. But I…” Cole drifted off. I squeezed him tight. He turned his head, looking up at the ceiling. I kissed his ear and his jaw, the stubble of the day’s beard prickling my lips.

“But he was fine with it?” I asked. “He’s OK with you meeting your birth mum?”

“He said he always knew the day would come.” Cole turned to face me, his soulful eyes glistening with water. “And he was glad that day was finally here, and he hoped it would fill the hole in my heart and answer all my questions. But he said to remember that no matter what I might discover, I’d always be a Kennedy, this would always be my home.” Cole deepened his voice and pretended to be his father: “ Remember, son, we are family, and we always will be. Every soul under this roof loves the bones of you, and always will. And don’t you bloody forget it. ”

A lonely tear ran down Cole’s cheek, and as I wiped it away with my thumb, it occurred to me that I had been a soul under that roof when Andy had spoken those words. I smiled to myself. Whether he knew it or not, Andy had been speaking for me too.