Page 10 of The Next Chapter

‘Afraid not. He’s a writer. He’ll be happy to help if y’all have any questions, though. Now you can go through the dining room out back to the cottage, or if y’all have luggage and what not, grab it and take it round the side of the house. Can’t miss it.’

‘Lola, have you seen my chaps? The leather ones. I can’t find them anywhere.’

Seb and I twist around so fast that I’m surprised the top of my body hasn’t detached from the lower half.

Thumping down the wooden stairs from the top of the hotel is the man I am pretty certain is Ashton Vain.

Aka Lola’s old bandmate, aka my potential birth father.

Now was a really, really bad time for my neck fan to cut out.

Ashton hasn’t managed to stave off the aging process in the same way that Lola has.

His face is tanned and there are some pretty serious wrinkles across his forehead.

I have the beginnings of wrinkles there too.

Do I get that from him? Am I looking at my future forehead right now?

His hair is black and a bit curly and sits just above his shoulders.

Hang on, is this where I get my dodgy hair from? Wow, it is hard to breathe.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he says quickly, arriving at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I didn’t realize you had guests.’

‘Mm hm, meet Seb and Lily. They’re staying in the cottage overnight.’

Seb, clearly overawed at being in the presence of two members of Beyond Baton Rouge, says, very effusively, ‘The pleasure is all ours, honestly.’ He’s looking at Ashton like he’s the second coming. I think he might break into a bow.

‘The cottage is lush, you’ll like it there.’

Seb throws an arm around my shoulders and almost knocks me over.

‘Yes, we’ll be super happy in there. Won’t we, oh sister dearest?’

He squeezes my arm where his hand has landed and I’m forced to choke out, ‘Yeah, super happy. What he said.’

There’s a good chance that I’ve been confronted with both my birth parents and all I’ve managed are stuttered splutterings. Seb is never going to let me live this down.

‘You still okay to take me to the station?’ Ashton asks Lola.

‘Course, let me get the keys.’

‘Great, I’ll grab my case and have another look for the chaps. Two ticks.’

It’s becoming a bit weird that Seb and I are still standing here, watching them have a conversation, our eyes moving backwards and forwards between them.

‘Right, come on then, twinnie.’ Seb watches Ashton jog up the stairs before picking up the cottage keys.

I don’t trust myself to speak. It’s possible I’ve gone into shock.

That’s not a thing, is it? On those reunion programmes you see on TV, one half of the people being reunited don’t just stand there not moving.

I want to watch Lola some more, but Seb is leaving again, so I’m forced to offer up a small smile and follow him back out of the front doors towards the car.

He’s humming the tune to ‘Storm in a Teacup’.

‘Well, that went well! Couldn’t have gone better. The business will be saved in no time! At least I got to meet Ashton Vain. My crush brought to life. Still does it for me. By the way, why did you tell her we were twins?’ Seb angry mutters. He’s talking so fast I hardly catch what he’s saying.

‘I panicked!’ I angry mutter back, whacking my neck fan to try to get it back in action. ‘I did just see my biological mother and maybe my biological dad for the first time in thirty years!’

‘True. What did you think?’

‘She’s just not what I expected. I thought I’d be getting Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada , not Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia .’

‘I know, right, what was with those overalls? They looked older than me.’

‘They were unexpected—’ another whack ‘—plus my fan has broken.’

‘Good, it looks ridiculous. Please take it off.’

‘Ashton seems more aging rock star, though. I knew he was Scottish. Was he born round here?’

‘Glasgow.’

‘You really do know a lot about him.’

‘I was sure I was going to marry him when I was about thirteen.’

We’re still talking as if we’re bickering, even though we aren’t.

We keep going as we pull all of our things out of the boot.

I give my fan one final hit. It lands with so much force, I’ve essentially just smacked myself, hard, on the back of the head.

I stumble back a few steps and crash straight into someone.

‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry—’

I turn around and…

Oh.

‘Sorry. I’m so sorry. My neck fan, it’s on the blink.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ The man I bumped into smiles. ‘No harm done.’ He rubs a hand over the back of his own – decidedly fanless – neck. ‘I’m Noah,’ he says. ‘Lola just mentioned that you’re staying in the other cottage.’

Sometimes the genetic lottery really does play to win. Noah is wearing navy shorts and a white T-shirt that should be illegal. He has tattoos poking out from under his sleeves and his dark blond hair is long-ish, it curls around his ears.

He’s like a Nordic David Beckham. And if I was a judgemental sort of person – which, clearly, I am – I’d say that he doesn’t look like a writer. There must be something in the water up here.

Seb moves first. I’m pretty sure that given half the chance he’d throw me on the ground and trample over me in an effort to get closer to Noah.

‘Nice to meet you.’ He’s shaking hands with Noah. ‘I’m Seb and this is my twin sister, Lily.’ He throws me a dirty look, like he’s still not over having to pretend that we’re related. ‘Non-identical, obviously.’

‘Nice to meet you both.’ Noah takes in all of the bags sprawled at my feet. His accent is very Scottish. ‘Do you need a hand with those?’ he asks.

I say no at the same time that Seb says yes.

Deciding that on balance we probably do need some help, I agree that we’d really appreciate that.

It’s a good call because we get to watch as Noah picks up almost all of my bags at the same time.

And even though feminist me should be offended, I can carry my own luggage thank you very much, feminist me has gone into hiding at such an overt display of raw, manly strength.

We follow Noah down the side of the house.

Yet more kayaks are propped against the wall here.

Seriously, how many kayaks does one dilapidated hotel need?

There are also some life jackets and a couple of blow-up two-person canoe type things.

I ignore them. There are animals everywhere.

Cats sleep in the shade of the hotel walls (they don’t wake up and hiss as we pass, so it’s very much just Elton and not the entire feline species who hates me).

‘There’s a lot of animals here,’ I say, stating what is completely obvious.

‘Lola rehomes them,’ Noah tells us, twisting round to look our way. ‘If there’s a waif or a stray out there, Lola will find it and give it a home.’ He laughs a little self-consciously while I try and mostly fail to process this information.

I spot another two chickens, though this pair seem to have all of their feathers, and their eyes for that matter.

And I’m sure there are more insects here than at home.

More than one bee buzzes around me, though I’ve always thought they were overly attracted to my Frizzease.

And the butterflies… they look like they’ve taken steroids. Why are their wings so big?

Clearly, all those journalists got it wrong. Lola wasn’t off swotting up on the art of scientology; she was up here prepping to man her own chicken-heavy version of Noah’s ark. Complete with an actual Noah.

Past the hotel, the space opens up into the gardens, to patchy grass scattered with picnic tables. There are hammocks tied between the trees that line its edges.

‘It’s pretty nice up here.’ Seb has stopped walking and is looking up beyond the tree line at the back of the hotel to where a mountain range rises from seemingly nowhere. They’re all dark and shadowy in the evening light, with mist swirling around their tops.

Pretty nice doesn’t quite cover it, I don’t think.

There’s an ethereal quality to Skye. It doesn’t feel like it could possibly be a real place. Except it is.

‘Most beautiful place in the whole world, I’d say,’ Noah answers. We’ve all stopped to look at the mountains now. Noah begins pointing out the names of some different peaks and oh my god, Noah! Writer Noah. That’s why I remember his name. Is this the Noah who writes books about Skye?

‘Are you Noah Adair?’ I blurt out.

He twists around, his cheeks turning hot and red.

‘That would be me, how did you, er… how did you know that?’

Okay, yes, definitely sounded like a stalker.

‘I love your books on Skye. You write so beautifully.’

Probably best not to admit that I’ve studied his entire body of work.

‘Thank you for saying so.’

He’s redder than ever.

I don’t have time to worry about the distress I’ve caused to the lovely Noah. I’m busy doing my best to concentrate on breathing like a normal person and also ignoring Seb cursing as he tries to drag his cabin-sized suitcase along the loose gravel path that winds through the gardens.

At the back, tucked out of sight of the main house by more trees, are two cottages sat just in front of a wooded area.

The cottages are made of dark stone, but I’m guessing that the UPVC doors are not original.

Each cottage has its own white plastic dining set outside the front, complete with two chairs.

‘This is you.’ Noah comes to a stop in front of one of the cottages. ‘I’m right next door, so shout if you need anything.’ Noah’s cottage is very, very close to ours.

‘We will do, thanks, mate,’ Seb says, despite the fact that I have never in my life heard him describe anyone as mate.

‘I’ll be on the kayaks in the morning, helping Lola. You should check it out,’ he tells us.

Neither Seb nor I are suited to kayaking. I have my fear of open water and Seb is, well… Seb. But I hear myself say that we’d love to.