Page 13 of The Next Chapter

‘I told you I was in the Scouts.’ I swallow. I’d been relying on the fact that Seb might be the only person less adept at kayaking than me to distract from how bad I’m going to be. I can’t grill him about it, though, because I need to make sure I get myself a top-notch life jacket.

It’s morning, but the day is already starting to heat up.

Everything looks hazy and I watch Noah as he chats to Lola, wondering what their deal might be.

They seem to know each other really well, but the report by the private investigators said that Lola never married and doesn’t have any other children.

I store the image of them laughing together away to analyse at a later point, preferably some place where I’m not having to face one of my biggest fears.

Harper catches me looking at Noah and Lola. She raises an eyebrow at me before returning to the life jackets. She’s mostly kicking through the pile, scattering them across the deck.

‘I’m not wearing one of them, they’re all wet.’

She’s right, the life jackets are all a bit damp. Hopefully, this doesn’t mean that the last lot of people Lola took out ended up in the water. Maybe Lola just gave them a quick hose down earlier. Hopefully, she takes better care of the life jackets than she does the rest of the place.

‘Harper.’ Her mum says it like a sigh, as if this isn’t the first time she’s had to say it. Harper rolls her eyes but does eventually clip a life jacket on.

I go to ask her if she wants to row next to me, but before I can say anything, Harper tells me, ‘She’s not my real mum, we’re just forced to live with them,’ and suddenly, I understand Harper’s anger. She’s not just an irritable teenager who hates the world. She’s in foster care.

It makes sense. Harper has jet-black hair and the couple look like they walked straight out of Sweden. Plus, the whole being angry at the whole world thing.

‘Okay, thanks for telling me that, Harper,’ I tell her, looking her in the eyes as I clip on my own life jacket and double, no, triple check that the straps are tight enough. ‘I was going to ask if you wanted to kayak next to each other, seeing as neither of us have done it before.’

She narrows her eyes at me. ‘Are you one of those paedos?’ she asks.

‘Harper!’

I can’t help the inappropriate and totally unattractive snort that I let out. ‘Nope, definitely not a paedophile.’ Of course, Noah chooses this moment to walk past us. I lean in to whisper, ‘I’m just terrified I’ll drown.’

That seems to get her attention.

‘You’re nervous?’ she asks.

‘Deathly. The bits of grass poking up through the water make me feel sick.’

I don’t know why I’m making so much of an effort with Harper.

She’s so frosty she’d give an Arctic tundra a run for its money.

Maybe there’s something about how obviously angry she is that appeals to me.

Especially when I’m so good at burying my own anger.

It’s refreshing, watching it seep out of her every pore.

‘Blake’s coming with us, too.’

‘Perfect.’ Seb appears at my shoulder, somehow managing to look stylish in the life jacket he’s clipped under his cape. ‘Hi, Blake.’

Blake ducks behind what I’m guessing is his foster dad before sticking his head back out and waving at Seb.

‘He doesn’t talk,’ Harper tells us.

Jesus, poor kid. I do my biggest smile at him, to let him know that it’s okay. The humidity and no small amount of terror is making my hair frizz like there’s no tomorrow and so there’s a good chance I’m damaging him further. Still, he does a small smile back, so hopefully not.

‘Let’s head on down to the kayaks,’ Lola calls to everyone.

I follow the group, dragging my feet as much as possible and only just stopping myself from agreeing with Harper who declares loudly that this is ‘a stupid fucking idea’.

I come to stand in front of a kayak (or, as I like to think of it, coffin), the last in the line. It’s… very small. I have short legs and I don’t see how they’re going to go in there. I look at Seb stood next to me. He’ll have to fold himself in half.

A couple of people along, Noah has pushed his sunglasses down now that the sun is brighter. He’s helping Blake tighten the straps on his life jacket in a way that’s disarmingly sweet.

I make a mental note not to pay him one bit of attention while we’re out on the loch. He’s very distracting and I’ll drown.

He catches me looking, meeting my eyes.

I’ll definitely drown.

Instead, I focus on Lola, who is running through what I consider to be a very brief safety demonstration. It’s hard to pay attention to what she’s saying. I’m distracted by the fact that that’s my birth mum. Right there! Standing barefoot on the edge of a worn wooden deck.

I zone back in as she assures us that we shouldn’t go under, but that if we do roll, we’ll pop back up the other side.

I deduce from this that Lola has adopted the same cavalier approach to health and safety that she did to parenting and go about tightening the straps on my life jacket with a vengeance.

Once it’s so tight that I can hardly breathe, I follow everyone else, my knees weak as I tug my kayak by a little rope to the edge of the water and make an awful job of climbing in.

Lola, already out on the loch, looks like she was born there. She’s completely relaxed, bobbing just a little while she watches us all. All those articles about her singing voice, her partying, her stardom and not one of them mentioned her kayaking prowess.

Seb, too, seems to have no trouble. He’s out on the loch before I even have a foot in my kayak, looking like he’s in the middle of a Gucci shoot. Traitor.

I manage to get my legs in. Definitely coffin like. But once they’re inside I’m beached on the pebbly shore. I try to bum shuffle, that’s what people always did on the videos. Probably I’m not shuffling hard enough, because I’m stuck here.

‘Here, I’ll give you a hand.’

Noah, also already in the water, is tugging at the end of my rope and I’m moving.

‘I don’t know how I got stuck here!’ I think I’m speaking too loudly.

I let out a sigh of relief as with one final tug, I start to float. I’d had some serious doubts that this glorified bottle could manage it, but the sudden feeling of weightlessness would suggest that I’m doing it, I’m bobbing on the loch.

I think I’m going to vomit. How am I meant to pitch the memoirs thing to Lola if I spend every day up here puking?

The loch looks still, so why am I moving? I look around, sure that other people aren’t bobbing quite so much. Instead, everyone else is watching Lola as she demonstrates how to use the paddle. She’s going round in a circle now and I didn’t think that was a skill set we’d be needing.

Everyone else turns in a circle. Well, everyone except Harper. She’s bobbing on the water, her paddle across her lap, looking positively thunderous. Blake is in a two-person kayak with his foster dad. He’s smiling, a fact which seems to make Harper even angrier.

I’m frozen with fear.

‘All right?’ Noah is next to me.

‘Perfect, thanks, raring to get going.’ Noah smiles and looks at my hands where they’re white knuckling my paddle, so it’s possible he can see through me.

‘Are we all ready?’ Lola calls.

I get that it’s not a question we’re meant to shout, ‘no!’ to, but that’s what I want to do.

I haven’t attempted one of those circle things.

I daren’t even look at the water. I already can’t see the bottom and imagining all the giant fish that’re underneath me is not helping my nerves one bit.

I’ve seen Blue Planet . You know those fish that live at the bottom of the ocean with massive teeth and dead eyes? I bet there’s one of them down there.

Breathing short little breaths and trying not to imagine falling foul of the dead-eyed fish, I manage to get my kayak moving, copying Noah.

His paddles seem to be generating an awful lot less water than mine.

Seb was right, his biceps are impressive.

There’s a vein running down the centre of one of them. Wow.

I can’t get distracted by the bicep vein, though. Not when even Harper is now prowling through the water like a hungry crocodile, eyes focused on some unknown spot on the horizon. She’s already abandoned our plan to stick together.

I mostly seem to be soaking myself. Every time I lift my paddle, half the loch comes with it, dousing my trouser shorts. I think it’s because my arms are shaking so badly.

I try to zone in to Lola as she tells us all about the mountains, but looking up at them where they encircle the loch makes me almost topple over and so I resolve to keep my eyes firmly water level.

Lola stops paddling, floating a little while she points out some rare species of flora on the banks.

We’re basically a hundred metres from where we set off and I’m already drained.

This isn’t helping to answer any of my questions about Lola.

If anything, it’s just highlighting the differences between us far more starkly.

Lobbing them out there for the world to see.

Even if we’re not different in the way I expected us to be, we’re definitely different.

‘Isn’t nature just totally, like, awe-inspiring?’ Seb drawls like an American cheerleader, gliding up next to me and looking like he was born in a fucking kayak.

Objectively, it is beautiful. The sky is cloudless, and the local mountains rise majestically against its backdrop.

Trees are scattered around the edge of the loch.

It’s gorgeous. Postcard worthy. Instagrammable.

It’s not just that, though. It’s hard to describe, but Skye seems like extra wild somehow.

I’ve been to the Lake District. I’m not completely unfamiliar with the natural world.

But other places seem tame, compared to the wilds of Skye.

Like the difference between seeing a tiger in the jungle and seeing one in a zoo.

‘I’m more of a city person,’ I whisper.