Page 41 of The Next Chapter

‘Just the heat,’ I tell her, flopping back to lay down. ‘I skipped breakfast.’

Before I even realize what’s happening, Lola’s hand is on my forehead. It’s cool, I’ve no idea how, maybe she really is a cold-blooded reptile. She’s peering down at me, closer than she’s ever been.

And I should be panicking. That’s my go-to reaction, I panic when Lola gets too close, worried that something might give me away.

That she might realize that my nose is similar to hers, or I don’t know, she might notice anything which shows me to be her baby.

But instead of panicking me, her hand on my head calms me down. It’s soothing.

‘I feel better now, thanks,’ I tell her, when it goes from being soothing to just a bit weird that I’m a grown woman who half fainted during what is meant to be a professional work session. Not to mention having the client (who is secretly my actual mother) sort me out.

‘Just the heat,’ I mumble, forcing myself to sit up.

‘Have a drink.’ Lola hands me my orange juice and I start to glug it.

But despite the funny turn, I don’t have my usual desire to run for the hills. I guess hearing about how Lola went to LA like that, I can get it, a bit. How she might have felt, leaving home and everything she knew like that.

It was brave.

I’ve moved eight hours up the road for six weeks and look at me, I’m a wreck. So, like I said already, I admire her a little bit, for making a go of it. And every time I talk to her properly, I admire her a little more.

On top of that, the basic confirmation that Ashton is my birth father has made me realize how much I’ve reserved my anger for Lola over the years.

I haven’t thought much of the dad who obviously gave me up too, maybe because I never knew for sure who he was.

He always seemed less tangible than Lola.

He wasn’t even on my birth certificate.

But listening to Lola talk about the first time they met shifts some of my anger over to him. Showing someone the admittedly picturesque Isle of Skye doesn’t cancel out abandoning them when they had a baby, does it?

‘So, you said Ashton showed you Skye? Weren’t there… rumours that you were close?’ I venture.

Lola has been staring off across the loch of death, as I privately refer to it.

And whatever I now think of Ashton (scum of the earth), I think he did a good job showing Lola Skye. She fits here, silent and still. Timeless, almost.

Jesus, one funny turn and I think I’m a poet. But it’s true, I’m finding it increasingly hard to picture Lola anywhere but here.

‘We were close. I’ll always love Ashton.’ She looks back towards the hotel. ‘This was his aunt’s house. He helped me buy it when she passed on and kept it all quiet, you know? I didn’t want folks to know where I was.’

Seriously, could just one of my birth parents pick a side? Good or bad. It’s not helpful, them both being so confusingly complex.

But if I needed any further confirmation, there I have it.

Lola loved him. No, she’s admitted that she still loves him, even though he didn’t exactly stick around.

Well, she wouldn’t be the first woman to fall for that.

Though I’d have hoped that older Lola would have had more sense than to pine for someone who clearly is never going to stay.

I think of me and Noah – maybe Lola and I are more alike than I’d realized.

Falling for the wrong person must be a genetic fault.

‘It’s cool that this used to be his aunt’s house.’

Lola nods. ‘It was run down by the time she passed, but it’s one of the oldest hotels on the island.

I was on my own, but that’s how I liked it.

And I was used to fixin’ things from the farm.

And then Noah arrived, and he helped me do out the cottages.

It’s getting harder, though, to keep on top of it all.

It needs money spending on it. I can’t lose it. I just can’t.’

It’s starting to make sense now. Lola needs to sell her memoirs to raise money for the hotel because it belonged to Ashton’s aunt. And he’s the love of her life.

I kind of hate that Lola’s willing to put all of this out there, when she clearly doesn’t want to, just for him. I vow to get building that pagoda later. Come hell or high water.

‘You, er, seem to do everything yourself?’ I say, knowing that she’s leading a hike this afternoon. ‘That must be hard.’

She shrugs. ‘Noah helps when he’s around.

But, I dunno, folk think that when you’re from a big family, or around people all the time, you must be good at it, but for me the opposite’s true.

I feel like I’m meant to be alone. I reckon that’s why Noah and me bumped along okay.

He’s that way too. He’s a travel writer because he wants to observe, not interact. ’

I don’t think it’s true, that Lola and Noah are meant to be alone. I don’t think anyone deserves to be alone. When people write their memoirs, they don’t so much focus on what they did, as who they did it with. It’s people. That’s the stuff we really care about when all is said and done.

I realize that I’m sat talking with my birth mum about Noah, about a man. It’s something I never got chance to do with Mum.

‘I don’t think you’d have to be alone, Lola. Not if you didn’t want to be. I’m sure there are plenty of people who’d want to get to know you.’

Something that feels like shame settles low in my stomach at my words. Or it could be that I’m out of my probiotics and as predicted there’s a scarcity of them up here. But no, I think it’s shame. Because whether I don’t want to admit it to either Lola or myself, I’m one of those people.