Page 19 of The Next Chapter

There’s an awkwardness as the three of us stand motionless, staring at each other. Lola’s wearing a floaty white shirt, with leggings that have giant sunflowers all over them. They’re the sort of clothes that you can’t help but admire someone being brave enough to wear.

I go to say something, anything vaguely normal to my birth mother, at the same time that Lola tries to talk.

‘Y’all came,’ she tells us, looking out at the view. Which is stating the very obvious. Maybe oxygen really is in short supply up here.

‘We did. And you were right, the view is amazing. I was just thinking about how meaningless life is in the face of it, actually.’

What am I saying? Noah laughs, while Lola twists to look at me. Her eyes are such a deep, dark blue.

‘You know, I think I agree.’ She takes a deep breath and then turns her face to the sun.

We’re all so still. Like no one wants to shatter whatever is happening up here on the top of the mountain. I have to remind myself that I’m still angry from everything I’ve learned in the last eighteen hours.

We know that Lola loves it up here, she was the one who told us about it. And now here she is interrupting what could have been a useful bit of intel gathering.

I swallow down the irritation with well-practised ease, fixing a smile on my face.

‘It’s really beautiful,’ I say, only having to work a little at keeping my voice even.

Lola looks at me. ‘I can show y’all the way down if you like?’

I mean, the path is right there. And I have every intention of using it. No more long grass for me.

And there’s no good way to tell someone that you want to walk down the only path in existence separately because, actually, you’re their daughter and being in their company makes you question everything about who you think you are.

That’s a bit much on any day of the week, let alone a Sunday morning with a hangover.

Instead, I just say, ‘Sure, that would be nice, thanks,’ and then when Lola asks if we’re done and we assure her we are, we’re following her across the summit to the path and setting off down it.

The whole thing is very, very strange. I have a ridiculous urge to lean on Noah.

Or hold his hand. But as it is I need to put both my arms out to help my balance down the steep path, which isn’t as sturdy as I thought it might be on account of the fact that several of the stones are loose.

I’m having to concentrate hard, which does at least take my mind off the whole Lola thing.

Lola and Noah are not, incidentally, walking with their arms out. They’re as sure-footed as mountain goats.

‘Seb was telling me about your work, Lily, it sounds mighty interesting,’ Lola says, actually jumping over a gap in the path.

Noah helps me over with a hand and I mouth a ‘thank you’ to him. I remember Kitty’s message, saying that Lola had pulled the memoirs idea and wonder why she’s bringing it up again now.

Still, I’m not daft enough to look a gift horse in the mouth. I don’t have Seb’s pitching skills, but I know I need to give this my best shot.

‘Oh,’ I say, not particularly adept at talking and walking. ‘Yeah, the personal memoirs business we run, er, together. I really love it. It’s a… um… real privilege. Having people tell you their story.’ Like I said, my ‘bringing in new clients’ spiel is not half as polished as Seb’s.

I need to get my shit together.

‘There’s just something really special about it. There’s always something we don’t know about a person. Like, however well we think we know our family, we can’t know or remember all of it. But it’s there, recorded for whoever they want to know their story,’ I say.

Lola is looking at me. I think I have her attention. I plough on.

‘We started the company with hardly any money,’ I clarify.

‘Seb’s great-granny – our great-granny – escaped Nazi Germany, while half of her family were killed in the Holocaust. It’s an amazing story, you know?

We do ghost-writing too. I tend to take the lead on those and they end up being properly published.

But even the more ordinary ones are cool to do.

The ones that are only ever for families. I love old people.’

‘It’s good, to find work that you love.’

Hopefully, I’m at least earnest. I nod. ‘I really do. It’s special, getting to hear about someone’s life and giving them the chance to control how their story is told.

I like that once it’s written, it’s always there.

Plus, you hear a lot of the same things, it’s…

comforting, I guess. Thinking that we’re all in this together. ’

It sounds like a sales pitch, and really, it is a sales pitch, but it’s all the truth. Every single word that I’m saying. I love my job.

Lola is looking at me and I think I might have her. The thought thrills and terrifies me in equal measure.

I try an encouraging smile, trip and fall over.

The wilderness hates me.

When I’m righted again, the moment has passed, and I don’t know how to get it back. Lola asks where I went to university (Manchester), and where my parents live. I get all tight around my ribs when I mumble Manchester, because I’m not about to tell her or Noah that my parents are dead.

Hopefully they’d understand – my parents, I mean. They always understood. And anyway, I’m here because Dad wanted me to be. I’m doing what he asked. Sort of. He didn’t mention using Lola to save the business, but still.

Lola seems to relax after that. She keeps talking all the way down the mountain, becoming more animated, waving her arms around and bobbing up and down with energy.

I can see it, then, lurking beneath the surface. Lola the star. The Lola people gravitated to and wanted to be around. She’s warm, fun, interested.

It’s nothing short of a miracle that she hasn’t been figured out by now. Maybe it’s just that no one would dream that Lola Starr would be someone whose choice of footwear seems to be Crocs with socks. Even I don’t wear Crocs with socks and I’m patently uncool.

She asks if I have a partner and my eyes dart to Noah before I admit that no, Colin and I broke up nine months ago.

She tells me I’m young, that if I ever want to find someone, I have my whole life ahead of me.

It’s not how I see myself at all. I feel older than I am, if anything. Not in the sense that I’m an old soul (though I’m probably one of those too), more just that I feel worn out. Ground down by it all sometimes.

Underfoot, the ground starts to level out. I don’t have my arms out anymore because the path here is less treacherous. None of these things make me as happy as they should do.

I don’t know if I’ve done enough to get Lola to change her mind. And time is running out. We’re leaving tomorrow.

The thought makes me walk even slower, and I stop completely when Lola starts talking about the biodiversity of the region.

Never in my life have I been so interested in heather.

Don’t get me wrong, I like heather, it’s all nice and purple.

But now, I’m obsessed. I hang off every word that Lola says about the stuff because she’s obviously so caught up with it all.

She’s talking faster than I’ve heard her, her accent getting stronger and stronger.

‘The bees like it real nice,’ she finishes.

‘Who doesn’t love bees? Better than wasps anyway.’

‘You know,’ Lola says, ‘wasps only get aggressive when their queen makes them redundant. They don’t do so well, without a purpose.’

And of course, Lola is a fan of the wasp. Though maybe I have more in common with them than I realized.

Talking and walking are two skills which when attempted in combination are apparently beyond me.

I stumble constantly over loose stones, only managing to avoid landing flat on my face again by Noah’s hand on my shoulder.

Lovely hand. When I look up, both he and Lola are looking at me, their heads tilted to opposite sides as if in a mirror.

I carry on walking to break the strange tension I sense. And trust me, I can spot tension a mile off.

Though out here, I’m not sure I trust my senses. Noah and Lola follow behind, chatting normally again, so maybe I imagined it all.

When we emerge onto the road leading back to the hotel, I’m not at all sure how I feel about the walk ending.

Should I mention the business again? It’s a fine line. If we go too heavy, we’ll give ourselves away.

I swear, it’s like someone stuck my brain in a tumble dryer and set it on spin.

Lola follows us all the way through the gardens.

She’s moved onto talking about the hotel now.

How she wants to do it up properly, grow the business.

About how there aren’t enough hours in the day for everything that she wants to do.

How she needs a magic money tree. I wonder if Lola had some sort of catastrophic brain injury after she quit the band and gained a whole new personality.

We come to a stop just a little way from the cottages.

It’s too late.

Lola doesn’t want us to write her memoirs.

The business will fail.

I’ll never hear her story.

‘Listen, Lily, I wanted to ask you something,’ Lola says while I spiral. It takes a second for my brain to catch up to the fact that she’s addressing me directly. With her accent, she misses the ‘g’ so it sounds like ‘somethin’.’

‘Okay,’ I reply. The beginnings of panic flutter deep in my chest. Has Lola figured me out?

I flip back quickly through the conversation we’ve just had, thinking about what might have given me away.

There’s no time for the sort of deep analysis my brain normally excels at, because Lola is still talking.

‘You know what you said earlier, about writing personal memoirs and ghost-writing and the like? Well, I wondered… I was thinking, see…’ She takes a deep breath. ‘… that maybe y’all would want to write mine.’