Page 4 of The Next Chapter

‘Eh,’ I say. Profound.

‘Sorry.’ Seb pushes a finger across the bridge of his nose. ‘Shit, I didn’t want to say anything especially not today.’

He means, I guess, because it’s been a year since Dad died.

I just blink at him while he keeps talking to himself.

‘It’s just that Kitty said she thought there would be lots of competition… and business has been tough… I thought I might have to let Clementine go even.’

That jolts me out of my daze.

‘No, you can’t let her go. Where else would she work while she waits for her TikTok career to take off?’

Seb is frowning. There’s an actual line between his eyebrows. And kudos to that line, for breaking through the Botox.

‘Hang on a second,’ I say, trying to still my now whirling brain. ‘What exactly has Kitty said?’

Seb twists his hands together.

‘That’s the thing, I don’t even know for sure that it is Lola.’

He takes a deep breath. There’s a weird buzzing in my ears.

‘Kitty just said that she’d heard that there was someone super famous, who was maybe thinking about getting her memoirs ghost-written.

Said it would be the book deal of the year and there’d be a major payout for whoever got the contract to write them.

Apparently, Lola, or whoever it is, wants to pick the ghostwriter herself.

She didn’t say that it was Lola exactly, but then she started humming the tune to “Eyes Full of Wonder”.

You know their last song, it’s catchy as fuck. ’

The song that Mum used to sing to me nudges through the ear buzzing that I have going on.

It’s all quite stressful, I won’t lie.

‘So, you think it’s Lola?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know. It sounded like that. And when I said, are you talking about Lola Starr, she wouldn’t confirm or deny it. Obviously, I didn’t tell her about you.’

My heart is beating really fast.

‘But… but… if it is Lola, why, I mean, why now?’

‘No idea. She’s been missing for what, thirty years?’

I nod. ‘A few months after she gave me up.’

‘Shit. It’s been going round in my head all week. No one even knows where she is.’

‘Most people don’t,’ I hear myself say. ‘But Dad did. It’s in a letter she wrote me when I was eighteen.’

‘OMG, the letter that haunts you from the unfinished to-do list on the fridge? I’ve seen the look in your eyes when you look at that list. I knew it was about Lola but not that he’d hunted her down. I just assumed he’d written you a deathbed farewell.’

I shake my head. ‘Hunted sounds quite predatory.’

Seb puts his wine glass on the old trunk.

‘Lily, I can’t ask you to do this. You’ve never even spoken to Lola; you can’t very well trot up to her now and pitch to ghost-write her bloody memoirs. No, it’s a terrible idea. Let someone else write it.’

That thought makes me feel vaguely ill. The thought that someone else might write Lola’s memoirs. Dredge it all up again. Listen while she talks about giving up her baby… People will find me… everyone will know…

I’m sitting up straight now, perched on the edge of the sofa.

I wonder how it would feel, to be brave about this.

It would definitely help Seb, and the business.

Plus, it’s clearly what Dad wanted me to do.

Maybe I could even help myself a little, too.

Maybe I wouldn’t feel quite so lost and drained.

Wondering feels like dipping my toe in a still lake and watching the ripples circle outward.

I take a deep breath. Close my eyes. Get ready to jump.

‘What if this is meant to be, like, the next chapter? For us, for me, I mean?’ I ask.

Seb is still frowning and muttering to himself. ‘It’s a bad idea, you might get hurt. You’re already so needy. It’d be off the scale.’

‘Just listen a second, will you?’ I cut him off. ‘You know Dad wanted me to get in touch with her, and it’s a year since he died and then Daisy went and died, and I keep wondering if she had, I don’t know, unfinished business.’

‘She was literally a hundred,’ Seb interjects.

‘And now this with Kitty… it just feels… fated. Like maybe now is the time because everyone is dying all of the time and what if Lola wants her memoirs writing because she’s dying too.’

I hadn’t even considered that fact until I say it, but now it’s a real-life worry.

Seb is looking at me like I’ve sprouted a third eyeball.

‘Fated. Like in the stars.’

‘No, not in the stars, just, I don’t know, something that I need to do. Plus, the business needs the money and I hate, like really hate, the thought of someone else writing those memoirs.’

Another look from Seb.

‘It’s the unfinished to-do list, isn’t it? It’s eating you alive.’

‘No… well, yes, it is a little bit, but it’s not just that.

If I could do what Dad wanted and help the business, it could be a good thing.

If she’s going to write them anyway, it might as well be us.

Perhaps I won’t spend each night crying quite so much,’ I say with the faux cheer of a budget Christmas elf.

‘Okay, we’re revisiting that at some point, likely with the help of a professional.’ He pauses to have a drink. ‘You really want to do this?’

I deflate a little. I did want to do this, a second ago, now I’m less sure. Decisive people really are life’s winners.

‘Maybe. I think so. We might not even get the contract, might we?’

Seb has another drink. Shakes his head. I think he’s quite stressed. A couple of strands of gelled dark hair have fallen forward on his forehead.

‘I already thought of that. The world and his wife will be pitching for this. If it’s really her.’

We fall silent after that. I’m trying to picture how I’ll feel, seeing Lola’s memoirs on a shelf somewhere in a couple of years’ time. Reading in black and white how she gave me up. Or maybe she’ll leave it out. Maybe she doesn’t even think of me as part of her story.

‘There’s one thing we know that the other companies don’t, though,’ I say, my voice louder than I expect it to be.

‘What’s that, then?’ Seb asks.

‘We can find out where Lola is.’

Seb laughs. ‘What, so we can go pitch to her in person?’

‘Exactly.’ I smile. Possibly, I look demented.

‘I’ll go get my Lola folder and we can start from there.’ I jump up from the couch and jog up the stairs faster than you could say, ‘terrible idea’.

In contrast to the rest of the house, my bedroom is a haven of calm and order. The walls are white, and I’ve embraced the concept of minimalism with open arms. Every item has a place, which is why it takes me next to no time to locate the little manilla folder I have tucked away in my wardrobe.

It’s impossible not to think about how weird this all is.

That I’m here, a year after Dad died, about to read his last message to me. Maybe that’s why I’ve been putting it off. I’ve been delaying the ending. Lola and her bloody memoirs have forced my hand.

I slide out the folder and carry it carefully to the front room, feeling like a parent about to show off their newborn to a crowd. Except instead of a group of doting relatives, I have Seb and Elton.

‘Here it is.’ I inject some cheer into my voice for Seb, who is partway through taking a big drink of the wine, resting back against Dad’s couch.

I sit at the other end of the couch from Seb and slide the folder onto the rusty, antique trunk that Dad used for a coffee table.

Seb leans forward. If he notices that my hands are shaking, he doesn’t let on.

I slip open the folder and the letter’s right there, resting on top of my adoption papers and my birth certificate. Plus, there’s a bunch of magazine clippings, because that’s what happens when you’re a megastar who suddenly disappears from the face of the planet.

Which is exactly what happened to Lola Starr.

When I was younger, I was obsessed with Lola, with every article ever written about her.

The ones from when she was in the band. By all accounts she was your archetypal mega rock star.

Drink. Drugs. So many drugs. Glamour. YouTube clips of them playing in Madison Square Gardens to thousands of people, pictures of her stumbling drunk out of some LA club, in an orange dress so short you can see her black knickers underneath, the (uninventive in my humble opinion) headline, ‘Is Lola Losing it?’

And then there are the ones from after she disappeared. All speculating about what might have happened to her.

I mean, could it be true that Lola became a leading scientologist?

Or maybe she really did open an Ashtanga yoga retreat in the Himalayas.

LA people are different to the rest of us, aren’t they?

In LA, it’s perfectly normal to go from lead singer in a hugely successful band to Mongolian goat herder.

No one questions these things out there.

I know all of the theories. I’d collected anything and everything that was written about her, gathering it all and storing it away in my manilla folder like a magpie with a sad little pile of treasure.

What hurts the most is that as a child I’d written to her every year on my birthday. Mum and Dad had encouraged it. I’d tell her stupid stuff about what I’d been up to that year and Mum and Dad had passed the letters on to the adoption agency to forward to Lola.

She’d never written back.

My curiosity had waned over the years. From journalists too. I guess they assumed that Lola really did not want to be found. I just figured that Lola wanted nothing to do with me. And then Mum went and died so I didn’t want Lola anyway. I wanted my mum back.

It’s not about the clippings or any of that stuff now, though. Now, my hands are moving towards Dad’s letter, the white envelope with ‘Lily’ scrawled across the front.

I pick it up and rest it on my lap.

Look at it.

‘No time like the present,’ I say to Seb. He’s been watching me this whole time. Waiting while I do a slow mo (and very dramatic) removal of the letter.

‘That’s what I’ve heard.’

‘Okay, I’m going in.’

‘Good for you.’

There really is nothing left for me to say after that.

If I don’t do this now, I might never do it. I might never know.