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Survive kayaking

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The room is unnaturally light. It bounces off the white walls as I crack an eye open. I didn’t pull the curtain last night and it’s an absolute miracle that I’ve managed to sleep with the room like this.

There’s obviously something about the country air that’s wearing me out. Even if we haven’t exactly breathed in much of it yet. Probably it’s because I’ve spent the past two weeks not sleeping, I’m catching up.

There’s a thunk from the living area, as if Seb’s closing a cupboard out there. The smell of coffee starts to work its way under the door and if I’m going to go spy kayaking with Lola Starr, coffee is absolutely essential.

I’ve slept face down which means my fringe is basically pointing straight up from my forehead. Bloody thing once again proves to be more trouble than it’s worth as I try to ineffectually get it to go down.

In a life first, I also didn’t follow my complete skincare routine last night.

I mean, I’d taken my make-up off, I’m not an animal, but I didn’t use my night serum.

I assess the damage in the mirror above the chest of drawers, pressing a hand to my fringe to keep it down.

That serum is obviously worth the small fortune I’d paid for it because without it I look like a Victorian opium addict.

I let go of my fringe and it springs back upright.

In the end, I do as much damage limitation as I can, the smell of coffee too alluring to keep me busy for long.

‘Morning,’ I call to Seb where he’s over by the kitchen, looking exactly the same as he does every morning. ‘Okay, how do you look like that?’

Seb is wearing outdoor clothes. But they don’t look like any of the outdoor clothes I’ve bought. His are all slick and tailored and track the lines of his body. He looks like Timothée Chalamet in Dune . My outdoor clothes just have so much material in them. So much. I look like I’m wearing a tent.

‘And your hair is all shiny.’

‘Bad hair days are not in my DNA.’

I start drinking the coffee he’s made in big gulps, hopeful that it might restore some sort of equilibrium.

‘We should get down there soon,’ Seb says, ‘the schedule says that it starts at nine. That’s twenty minutes away. Do you want some breakfast?’

The fact that I slept past 8am is a miracle that I don’t have time to dwell on. Twenty minutes. I have twenty minutes to psych myself up for kayaking and seeing Lola again. And my fringe is vertical.

‘No, I’ll just grab a breakfast bar, thanks. I need to get ready. Do you need the bathroom? Or should I go in the bathroom? Had we better draw up a bathroom rota? I knew I should have brough my Sharpies.’ Seb’s hands are on the top of my arms. ‘Get it together, Lily, it’s okay.’

I’m nodding, still cradling my half-drunk coffee in my hands between us.

‘Okay, good,’ he says, talking slowly. ‘Now, as you can see, I’m dressed. You need to go and shower and then get dressed. Got it?’

I nod, dreamlike still. This is what I need. Someone to manage my every move. Imagine how easy life would be, without the avalanche of micro stresses that comes with decision making.

In the bathroom, I have the speediest shower known to man. The shower is really small, and the water splutters out in fits and starts. It’s also a bit cloudy, which I ignore. Panicking about Legionnaires’ disease isn’t exactly going to restore my equilibrium.

I get soap in my eye and bash my knee and then I have to try to pull my clothes on in the confined space, still mildly damp.

I pin my fringe back, having lost this battle, but vowing to win the war later with some heavy-duty hairspray.

Looking at myself in the mirror as I brush my teeth, I’m thinking that it’s really going to be a toss-up which part of my cover story is the least believable today.

The fact that I’m pretending not to know who Lola is or that I’m meant to be enthusiastic about kayaking.

I feel green at the thought of the loch.

Greenish hue or not, I am not a woman who looks like they might thrive in the wild.

I step out of the bathroom, followed by a plume of steam.

‘What are they?’ Seb asks, waving a hand at me.

‘What’s what?’ I ask.

‘On your legs. Why are they so big?’

‘They’re my new trousers. I don’t know, they fit on the waist but they’re massive everywhere else. But they do detach at the knee and turn into shorts.’ I attempt a demonstration. The zip gets stuck at the exact moment Seb starts to laugh.

I hop about trying to force the snagged zip shut. Seb is now howling. ‘Neither of us is exactly Bear Grylls,’ I finish, finally reclosing the zip.

‘True. Ah well, that’s cheered me up no end. Thanks, Lily. Come on, we’d better get going.’

I inhale an all-bran breakfast bar and then stuff the (many) pockets of my half-short-half-trouser get-up with back-up snacks.

We step outside.

‘God, my arse looks amazing in these trousers. Don’t you think?’ Seb admires himself in the reflection of the double doors, twisting round to get a good look.

‘It does look pretty good, yeah,’ I agree. ‘Sort of more round than normal.’

‘Morning,’ Noah calls over, waving while me and Seb both act like we weren’t just checking out his bum.

‘Morning,’ we call back, and Noah smiles. I think we got away with it.

Walking down to the loch together, I think that Noah doesn’t seem to be quite as at war with the heat or the environment as me.

He’s wearing navy swimming shorts, a white T-shirt and flip-flops.

His sunglasses are pushed to the top of his head.

He looks like he should have a film crew following him around.

‘A braw day to be out on the loch,’ he says, glancing up at the already blue sky.

Braw means nice. I read about that already.

I couldn’t disagree more, but I nod. ‘Let’s do this thing,’ I reply. And there’s a moment that’ll be living in my brain for the rest of time. Popping up at unhelpful intervals to remind me how cringe I’ve been.

It’s already warm as Seb and I trail behind him, making our way around to the front of the hotel. He leads us down to the wooden pier where there’s already a small number of people waiting alongside some kayaks which, in my opinion, bob ominously.

Lola is there, too, her blonde hair in a plait again. She’s chatting to a middle-aged couple, while the mostly bald chicken pecks around her bare feet.

I look down at my own Gore-tex shoes, the laces pulled tight, and wonder if that’s one of the reasons she left. Maybe even as a baby there were signs that I’d end up awfully high maintenance and she didn’t fancy dealing with it.

The closer I get, the more I’m realizing that the loch water is so dark it’s almost black. If I fell in and drowned, no one would ever find my body.

We join the edge of the group as Noah goes to talk to Lola.

The teenager from the woods last night is here, looking absolutely furious about the fact.

She’s stood with, but a little apart from, a regular looking couple.

The teenager is dressed like she’s about to go clubbing rather than out for a nice little kayak on the loch of doom.

Her skirt is held together with actual safety pins.

A boy who must be about nine gestures to her to come over to where he’s half dangling from the edge of the pier and I absolutely don’t want to know what he’s seen in there. I bet it’s a massive fish. And there you go, giant loch fish, a new fear unlocked.

I expect the teenager to tell him to fuck off, that seems to be her go-to. But instead, she lets out a huff and says, ‘What is it, Blake?’, moving over to him.

‘Careful Harper, careful Blake!’ the man from the normal couple calls. The look Harper gives him is pure venom. Teenagers are literally terrifying.

‘Right.’ Lola claps her hands together and we all turn to look at her. ‘I think that’s probably everyone.’

I wonder if I’m the only person imagining a slow and watery death for us all. Those kayaks look very flimsy and if the Titanic sank, what chance do they have?

Lola asks whether it’s anyone’s first time in a kayak. I raise my hand like I’m seven and shouting, ‘Miss, Miss, Miss,’ during carpet time. The boy stood next to Harper, I think she said his name was Blake, puts his hand up, too, while Harper lets out a particularly loud, ‘Oh my fucking god.’

‘I’m raring to go, though,’ I tell the assembled group. Because I cannot act like the catastrophe I am. That is group situations 101. You become the most amenable, least annoying version of yourself. You definitely don’t ask to see a risk assessment, which is what I’d like to do.

Lola doesn’t seem to mind, though, she just smiles really wide at Harper and says, ‘Not to worry, we’ll all be wearing a life jacket, and we’ll stay together.

I thought we’d go around the perimeter of the loch, and I’ll point out some local landmarks as we go, if y’all like.

Noah’s here to help, too. The hotel is his second home. ’

Course it bloody is.

Noah shuffles from foot to foot, looking like he’d really rather not have people come and talk to him.

Once again, I am struck by how obvious it is that this is the Lola Starr.

Her accent is soft, but it’s still there.

All lazy vowels and rhythmic lilt. I look around, sure that at any second now, someone is going to point a finger and cry, ‘You must be that singer who disappeared thirty years ago! I’d recognize you anywhere! ’

But that doesn’t happen. Instead, people are just wandering, casual as you like, over to the pile of life jackets behind Lola and picking one out.

‘When have you been on a kayak before?’ I whisper to Seb, because this sounds like the sort of question that a sister wouldn’t have to ask.