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Page 40 of The Next Chapter

To Do:

Truth reveal to Lola?

Tidy cottage

Amend timetable – when will we build the pagoda now?

Next Lola chapter to write

FaceTime Elton

Get on top of emails

Looking at the long lines of Noah’s back where he’s sprawled face down in my bed, I’m forced to accept that in so far as not developing feelings for him, I’ve been a total and utter failure.

It’s not even just the sex.

I like him. And that’s somehow even worse.

But where will all of this get us? We didn’t exactly hash out all of the details last night. You don’t stop someone kissing their way down your stomach and ask them to hash out anything.

But I don’t have time to dwell on it anymore this morning. We’ve overslept, and I’m due to meet Lola again.

‘Noah.’ I lean over him. ‘It’s eight thirty. I’m going to get ready to meet Lola. I’ll see you later.’

He hmms and shifts a little, causing the white bedding to pull down. I’m out of the bed in a flash, I’ve no time for distractions.

Noah still hasn’t emerged by the time I leave, thinking that I’ll have to clear up when I get back. Clothes and towels are scattered to every corner of the cottage.

I pick my way round the side of the hotel and towards the loch, where I can see Lola under the willow tree. It’s another hot day, but it’s early and there’s a faint breeze, so it’s possibly the least flustered I’ve ever been here.

‘Hi,’ I say to Lola, sitting down next to her on the pink and white striped blanket she’s laid out for us. She’s staring out at the loch, inscrutable to the max.

‘Morning, Lily. Sleep okay?’

Oh my god, does she know about Noah? I bet she knows.

‘Great, thanks. I don’t normally sleep well away from home. Not that I sleep well when I’m home most of the time. I think it’s a me thing rather than a sleep thing. Anyway, last night was good.’

I think… there’s no other word for it: Lola’s smirking at me. Not in a malicious way, more just that she thinks I’m mildly amusing. The edges of her mouth are turned up at the corners. How strange.

‘Shall we get started?’ I ask, uncrossing my legs and then realizing that there’s no more comfortable a position to be had, so I recross them. It’s all well and good having beautiful lakes and mountains up here, but there’s a woeful shortage of chairs. I’m literally always sat on the floor.

At least it’s too early for all the flies.

‘All right.’ Lola stills even more before she starts to talk.

I didn’t think it was physically possible for her to be any stiller than she already was, but I’ve noticed now, she always does this before she starts.

She’s like those crocodiles who slow their hearts so that they beat three times a minute or something. She’s poised.

I set my phone between us and hit record.

‘Ready when you are.’

I thought I was gonna die on the flight to LA.

I’d never even been out of Louisiana before. And here I was in what felt like a tin can right above the clouds. I didn’t like flying then. Still don’t like it that much, if I’m being honest. I was seriously glad when those wheels hit the ground.

I left right after I graduated. It hadn’t been a hard decision to go, even though Jimmy told me the label wanted to set up a pop punk band and I wasn’t all that sure what pop punk was.

I pestered the record shop to play Gwen Stefani over and over, though I couldn’t imagine ever being anything like as glamorous as her.

Jimmy said I’d pick it up and I trusted him.

I’d told my sisters where I was going and they must have told Ma, I suppose. But she never reached out to wish me luck. Probably she was annoyed that I’d managed to get something decent for myself, it ruined her idea that I was good for nothin’.

Jimmy was there to meet me off the plane.

I remember thinking that he looked so happy to see me.

I don’t think anyone had ever looked at me like that before, it was…

nice. He looked rich too, or richer than he’d seemed on holiday in Baton Rouge.

I only had one bag filled with my thrift store clothes and Pa’s guitar.

I was half terrified. I kept thinking that someone was going to come and tell me that it was all some awful mistake, that they’d got the wrong person and I’d have to go straight home.

My hand was shaking so bad I could hardly open my passport. But seeing Jimmy made me feel better.

The rest of the band were staying at this apartment in Silverlake and Jimmy took me right there to see them. They’d been put together by the record label, but they hadn’t been able to find a lead singer yet and that’s where I came in. It all felt more than a little surreal to be honest.

We took a car to the new neighbourhood, and it was like I was in a trance. Baton Rouge had been hot and dry and busy, but LA was a different beast. The air felt different. Like it fizzed and crackled with excitement. Already I thought LA was the place where things just happened.

I’d never cared so much about what I looked like.

We all looked poor back home. Even my nice thrift store clothes weren’t real nice.

They were just better than something that had been handed down four times already.

But on my way to meet the rest of the band, I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d think of me.

Every person we passed on the sidewalk looked real beautiful.

I didn’t think I looked much like a lead singer.

I definitely didn’t look like Gwen Stefani.

I started to worry that even if it wasn’t a mistake, me being here, the rest of the band wouldn’t want me. That they’d take one look at me and send me straight back on the tin can in the sky.

‘Relax, Lola,’ Jimmy told me when we got to this block of flats, ‘you’re gonna do just fine. You’re special, I can tell.’

And when Jimmy told me to relax, I did, for a little bit at least. He had this way of making you do whatever he asked.

The flat wasn’t in a high rise or anything, just two floors.

It looked new then, but I imagine it’s dated a fair bit since.

I followed Jimmy up some steps and waited while he banged on a black door.

When it opened, there were two people stood there. A boy and a girl, both smiling. They didn’t look that much different to me, their clothes were tatty too.

‘Say hi to Lola,’ Jimmy told them.

‘Hi, Lola,’ they said, and I dared step inside after that.

‘Is this everyone?’ I asked Jimmy. Maybe it was daft not to have asked how many people were in the band before now, but I’d been so focused on just getting there, I didn’t ask anywhere near enough questions.

‘I’m Prune,’ the girl said. ‘I play the keyboard.’

‘Shawn.’ That was the boy. ‘Bass.’ He pointed at himself. ‘Ashton is here somewhere. ASHTON,’ he shouted, way too loud for the tiny flat.

And this Ashton, he came wandering out of what I guessed was his bedroom, rubbing his eyes. ‘Jet lag is the worst,’ he grumbled in a funny accent before he realized I was there. His hair was long and stuck up all over the place, where he’d been asleep.

He scratched his stomach, and his T-shirt rode up a bit. He was tall and skinny, like someone stretched him out. He moved next to Prune and Shawn and smiled at me too. I remember thinking that he had a kind smile and maybe this really would work out.

‘That’s all of you,’ Jimmy said, looking around at where we were stood in a sort of circle by the door. ‘We’ll give you the rest of the day to settle in, Lola, but then you’re all due down the studio tomorrow. We’ll send a car, be ready for eight.’

I realized then that Jimmy was leaving, and I didn’t want him to go.

‘Wait,’ I called when he turned to leave me. Us, he turned to leave us.

‘Er, what’re we gonna be called, the band, I mean?’ I asked the first thing that came into my head.

‘Beyond Baton Rouge.’ Jimmy winked at me. ‘And you guys are going to be stars.’

‘So, that’s how you met Ashton?’

Lola nods. ‘That’s right, we stayed friends, after all these years.’

God, if Ashton’s my biological dad, does that mean that Lola’s been pining for him for all these years?

Poor Lola. She tells me she’ll be right back, and I don’t know if she needs a moment, just like I do, because she disappears into the hotel, emerging a couple of minutes later with a glass bottle full of orange juice and two glasses.

She sets them down on the stripy blanket.

All I need is a parasol and it’ll be like I’m being courted in the nineteenth century.

I think this might well be the first time I’ve ever seen Lola relax.

‘Didn’t Ashton do Strictly ages ago?’ I ask, ending the recording on my phone. I’d watched that series with Mum, on edge the whole time. Seeing him had made the whole thing real and I’d been worried that someone was going to come and take me away from Mum and Dad.

Lola nods and smiles a little. ‘He did. Came third, I think.’ She pours some juice in one of the glasses and has a sip.

‘He got knocked out with his rhumba.’

‘They all do,’ Lola answers.

‘I know, right. So unfair.’

‘He’s from here,’ she volunteers. ‘Ashton, I mean. He grew up in Glasgow, but he had an aunt out here. So it was him who showed me Skye and I went and fell right in love with it straight away.’

Oh my god. It must be him, then. Ashton must be my dad. Shit. Shit. Shit.

‘He did?’ I ask, sounding like I’m dying of heat exhaustion. Which if this heatwave doesn’t let up, I might well be.

‘Mm hm. We stayed close after the band broke up. He comes to visit when he’s in the country, but he spends a lot of time on tour.’

I can’t reveal to Lola that I know he’s currently in South Korea. How would I explain low-key stalking an ex-band member of hers? But this is all a lot. My head feels fuzzy, as if I’ve gone full Victorian housewife in need of some smelling salts because my corset’s too tight.

‘Is everything okay, Lily?’ Lola is blurry, which isn’t good, is it? Is it possible to have a stress-induced stroke?