Page 21 of The Next Chapter

To Do:

Start Lola memoirs

Call Mr Cains

Stop lying so much

Food shopping (vegetables!!!)

Message all WhatsApp groups

Get on top of emails

This seemed like a much better idea yesterday.

‘You’re going to be brilliant.’

I think I’m going to be sick.

Seb is in his car; the engine is running and the roof is down.

We’re saying goodbye. But also, he’s not driving off because I’m clutching the door through the open window.

I’m not exactly sure what my strategy is.

Force him to stay with my brute strength.

That seems ridiculous, I could hardly lift a kayak paddle.

‘It feels like you’re abandoning me.’

‘One abandonment and you think everyone’s at it.’ Behind his (very reflective) sunglasses, I’m certain that he’s rolling his eyes. I look around to check that no one has heard the abandonment thing, but the only sign of life is the bald chicken.

Seb puts a hand over mine.

‘You can do this.’

‘I really can’t.’

‘You can.’

‘Do you think?’

‘I know. You’ve been employee of the year for over a decade.’

‘Yeah, but our other employees are Clementine and Phil.’ Still, I won’t lie, I do love the certificate Seb prints for me every year. ‘Argh, I’m going to do it.’

‘That’s the spirit. Now let go of the car before you change your mind again.’

I reluctantly release my grip.

‘And call me every day.’ I might be mistaken, but there’s a slight hitch to his voice.

‘Of course I will.’

‘Love you, Lily Brown. Good luck.’

There’s a lump in my throat making it impossible to speak.

Instead, I watch Seb do a three-point turn out of the car park ready to make the trek back. I try not to concentrate too hard on the fact that without his car, I’m basically stranded here, eight long hours away from home.

I take a deep breath in and out. Count to five and swallow around the lump as his car disappears through the hotel gates. I offer up a final wave.

Another breath.

My first session with Lola is in ten minutes.

It had all happened so quickly last night.

After I’d decided to stay, Seb had all but shoved me out of the cottage to let Noah and Lola know. I think he was worried that I would back out. It was a good call, I still feel like backing out.

Noah had promised to keep me company and even though he was just being nice and friendly, I still felt hot all over.

A state of being that had quickly dissipated once I’d told Lola that Your Life would take her on as a client and that I’d stay for the summer.

She’d suggested that we get started right away.

As in the next day. As in ten… no, wait, five minutes from now.

I’m still breathing deeply and staring at the empty car park where Seb’s car has disappeared from.

I need to move. I hate being late and I’m at a real risk of it if I don’t move right now. Here I go. Moving right this second.

I take a final, calming deep breath and walk back towards the cottage for my phone. If we’re doing the interviews online, I normally just get a transcript of the session, but whenever we get a local client, I use software on my phone to make sure I don’t forget anything important.

Harper is in the gardens, by one of the picnic tables. She’s holding her phone up to the sky.

‘Hi, Harper,’ I call to her.

She looks up, squinting her eyes against the sun as she sees me and ignores me.

Well, that’s that, then.

Phone in hand, I’m walking through the gardens towards the back of the hotel, breathing in warm summer air. The grass under my feet is patchy, filled with weeds. It looks frazzled. I know how it feels.

Lola and I have agreed to meet in her office, once the breakfast rush is over, though personally, I feel that rush is a stretch. There are, like, eight people staying here.

The hotel isn’t big. I find Lola in the dining room, piling empty bowls of porridge on a table.

Like all of the rooms, in here, it’s mostly wood.

The walls are pine, and the floor is stone.

There are worn wooden tables in various sizes and Lola has pinned the Scottish flag along one wall, along with a blue flag with a white cross on it that must be that of the Isle of Skye.

Seb and I haven’t mixed much with the other guests this weekend, but now that I’m on my own, I’d better make more of an effort to be friendly. I wave hello at a young couple sat nursing cups of tea.

‘Hi, Lola,’ I say to her back. She stops wiping and turns to face me. ‘I’m ready whenever you are.’ I smile. See. I am calm, collected. I don’t know who I’m trying to convince, but I’m going with it.

‘Right-o,’ she says, and I get it, she’s nervous too.

It’s normal. Sharing your life story with someone is daunting.

This isn’t fiction, it’s someone’s actual life, the only one they get.

That’s one of the reasons I love this job, it’s such a privilege to hear a person’s history.

She turns to the couple still eating. ‘Y’all can just leave those on the side here, I’ll get them later. ’

‘No problem, Lola,’ the man says with a Scottish accent.

‘Follow me, then,’ she says to me. So I do, my own nerves ramping up as I follow her through to the entrance where we arrived on that first night.

This time we pass the leaflets and wait outside a door by the entrance while Lola pulls a ring of keys out of her dungarees pocket.

Today, she’s wearing a tie-dye green and white T-shirt underneath and she has Crocs on her feet.

Lola wiggles a key into the lock and pushes the door with her shoulder.

‘After you.’ She waves me through.

Lola’s office is the tiny office of a woman who is running a ten-bedroom hotel on her own. I think there’s a desk under the pile of papers by the small window, but I can’t make out any of the actual desk. The ends of my fingers twitch with the urge to sort.

The Labrador is here, sprawled asleep on the floor. Doesn’t try to move as we tiptoe around him.

‘He sleeps through anything,’ Lola tells me and she’s right, he doesn’t even stir. I didn’t expect to be carrying out the interview over a huge furry dog, but there we go.

‘It’s, er, organized chaos,’ Lola says, moving papers off the chair by her desk. ‘Heavy on the chaos.’

There’s a guitar propped in the corner by the desk and the window, half buried under overhanging papers. My eyes keep darting to it. Over and over. I’m no guitar expert, but it looks old.

Outwardly, however, I am committed to professional indifference and so I stomp down the fact that the universe is presenting me with yet another difference between Lola and me.

She is obviously someone who thrives in chaos, and I am just not.

Instead, I say, ‘It’s nice and cosy,’ as Lola finally frees the chair from its paper prison.

Then she unfolds a small stool from the corner and sits on it.

‘You take the chair, please.’

‘I don’t mind the stool,’ I say, blatantly checking out the office. I think there’s a long cork board along the wall opposite the door. Like the desk, however, it’s been swallowed by a mountain of paperwork. This woman needs a to-do list like humans need oxygen.

‘Don’t even think about it.’ Lola plonks herself down on the stool and I tentatively take the chair. It looks old, with a faded green seat cushion that has a rip across the middle.

‘Okay.’ I sit down, feeling strange about the height difference between me and Lola.

It’s almost like I’m a primary school teacher reading to children sat cross-legged on the carpet.

Except in this instance the child is actually my mother, and she’s wearing dungarees and Crocs. It’s a pretty fucked up scenario.

I clear my throat, stalling for time.

I notice that she has a Greenpeace banner across one wall.

‘I really care about the environment too,’ I blurt out.

‘I get these washing tablets delivered. They have, like, fifty per cent less packaging, and I stopped using that facewash with the little beads ages before it was properly banned. You know, the ones that killed the fish. And I was the secretary of the anti-fracking committee for a while.’ I babble on, thinking that I really need to stop talking right about now.

‘That’s good, Lily,’ Lola says. She’s quiet Lola today. Not cheerful like she was up the mountain. She’s pensive and calm. The woman has more layers than an onion.

‘So how this normally works,’ I say, bringing us back to the task at hand, because I can’t think of how to stall anymore; I make a show of placing my phone gently on top of a pile of papers, ‘is that I’d ask you to start at the beginning, or wherever you want your story to start.

I’ll try not to interrupt, unless I need you to clarify something.

Mostly, I’ll record it all on here.’ I gesture to the phone.

‘Once we’ve done all of the interviews, I’ll type up my notes and we can start working on forming a draft.

I’ve, er, signed the non-disclosure agreement you emailed over.

Seb too. We sent it back to you this morning. ’

‘I appreciate that, Lily.’

I feel a smidgen of pride at the fact that the plan worked because Lola trusts us.

‘I got the contract you signed too.’ It had arrived in my inbox at gone midnight last night.

When Lola Vain officially became a client of Your Life.

The contract states that she pays us a flat fee, plus a cut of whatever book deal she might get.

It’s a standard contract, but I think Seb’s right, this could be the answer to all our problems. So long as nothing goes wrong, that is.

The dog’s tail flaps up then down as Lola squirms on her stool. ‘I trust y’all to follow the rules.’

‘Absolutely. It’s all in appendix three of the contract.

’ I smile, nodding, feeling calmer. Because is there anything better than good appendices?

I’d been the only person at Your Life excited about the new privacy legislation.

Seb had made me GDPR lead. A promotion that came with zero pay rise, obviously.