Page 7 of The Next Chapter

To Do:

Balloon arch

Pack for Skye

Elton food and meds

Research Skye

Practise pitch for Lola memoirs

Ginseng tea to order (next day delivery)

Get on top of emails

I’m in my kitchen and I’m frozen with panic.

A sensible, well-balanced sort of a person in the lead-up to meeting their uber glamorous birth mum might have spent time undergoing a makeover type transformation. Like that woman in Miss Congeniality (Seb’s favourite film) when she emerges from that bunker all shiny and fresh.

I don’t do this. I think, if anything, ever since that night two weeks ago where Seb and I read Dad’s letter, I’ve been going through an anti-metamorphosis.

The heat wave has ramped up, wrapping us all in sweltering, sweaty hotness.

The UK is just not set up for hot weather, we all lose our minds a bit.

My fringe, thick and troublesome at the best of times, is positively riotous. Like it’s attempting to Great Escape my own forehead. It’s the hot weather. And the stress. Stress and heat always send my hair batshit.

Plus, I have nothing that I need to survive in the wilderness of Scotland.

All of my clothes have some sort of collar on them – cute little Peter Pan collars, big lacey collars, embroidered with flower collars.

I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube survivalist videos and none of the survivors are wearing tops with decorative collars on them.

The fact that I’m regressing into a less good version of myself is the exact opposite of what I want to happen.

Even though Lola abandoned me, I still want her to like me. To think that I’m an unflustered sort of person who can deal with whatever life throws at them. I don’t want her to know that the real me is strung so tightly that if I snapped, I’d catapult myself to Australia.

There’s a knock at the door. ‘Morning, morning, anyone ready to go meet the woman who birthed them?’

There’s a squeak as Seb pushes past the balloon arch.

‘Ah,’ he says, ‘I see we’re having another nervous breakdown.’

I don’t know what he means. I’m stood in the middle of the kitchen (facing away from the fridge) staring into space and breathing deeply. That’s a normal thing to be doing, isn’t it? My new neck fan lets out a low hum and sends a gentle breeze up towards my face.

‘Can you calm the fuck down? Your stress aura is going to kill the plants,’ he tells me.

I dart my head around, looking at the plants. I don’t think plants require calm in the same way that they require, say, sunlight, but I try to relax my shoulders. Just in case.

‘Why is there a balloon arch in your hallway?’ Seb asks.

‘I was in charge of the arch for the hen do I cancelled. It didn’t seem fair that Charlotte missed out on her arch because I’m flaky.’

Cancelling my place on the hen do was a painful process for everyone unfortunate enough to be involved. I’d still agreed to provide the balloon arch. It’s a ninety-six-piece balloon arch, because, you know, I felt guilty.

POP.

‘Elton!’ I call. ‘Stop popping the balloons.’

POP.

POP.

I groan as Seb mutters something that sounds like, ‘Give me strength.’ At least Elton sabotaging my arch efforts has brought me out of my trance. I move over to triple check the ‘Elton and Plants Guidance’ I’d left for Mr Cains next door.

It’s seven pages long.

Plus, I’ve left all of Elton’s prescription food out, divided into days. Because last time I’d asked Mr Cains to cat sit, he’d given him some Sumptuous Salmon cat food and the jelly the sumptuous salmon was floating in gave Elton a kidney stone.

But Mr Cains genuinely likes Elton and always offers to have him. And Elton is much friendlier to Mr Cains than me, though that bar is admittedly very low.

POP.

‘Elton!’

‘You know that’s why Elton hates you, right?’ Seb nods over to the piles of weighed out dry cat food.

‘What? He should love me. I want him to live a long and happy life. He’s obese.’

‘He’s already lived a long and happy life. He wasn’t even that young when your dad adopted him. Let him spend his golden years gorging himself on meaty jelly.’

I clutch the edge of the countertop at the thought of Elton dying. Which is a totally healthy response.

Still, I remind myself, it would be hard for anyone to kill a cat in three days. The hotel had a three-night minimum booking policy so we’ve taken today off work to drive up. I’ll be back on Monday at the absolute latest. If we’re successful with the memoirs pitch, we’ll do the meetings online.

‘I’ll go and get my stuff,’ I tell Seb, my voice higher than normal.

‘You’re not meeting your birth mum with that thing around your neck!’ he calls after me.

‘She won’t know she’s my birth mum, so it doesn’t matter. And anyway, it’s a fan, and I bought you one too,’ I call back.

I jog up the stairs, slowing down when I realize that I’m breaking a sweat at the sudden movements.

Earlier in the week, I’d taken myself on a frenzied trip to Decathlon for some new, wilderness appropriate clothes.

I’ve been reading all about Skye. There’s an author, Noah Adair, and he’s written a ton of books and articles about the island.

It sounds wild. Not in the way that Lola’s band days sounded wild, more lakes and mountains and just general outdoorsy stuff galore.

Apparently, it is one of Scotland’s hottest destinations. Not in the temperature sense, more in that it’s super Instagrammable. So, maybe it’s not complete anathema, Lola living there. She’s bound to be somewhere hip.

All packed. I’d had a moment of blind panic when I’d had a quick glance (spent hours draped over) the faulty website for Lola’s hotel and realized there was a chance I’ll have to take part in some water sports if we’re going to be convincing in our, ‘we’re just here on holiday, oh, you’re looking for a ghostwriter, what a coincidence’ ruse.

It’s one of the reasons that this is an absolutely terrible idea.

I have a fear of open water. Not like a paralysing one or anything.

Okay, it’s a bit of a paralysing one. I’d just rather not swim in water where I can’t see what’s underneath me.

If I’m going to swim, I like the body of water to be filled with so much chlorine that my eyes feel like they’re going to burn right out of my skull.

So, the giant lake next to Lola’s hotel is score one against this shit idea.

Secondly, I just don’t know how I’m going to cope seeing Lola.

I can’t picture how it’s going to play out in my head.

Whenever I try to imagine meeting her, or worse, having to listen to her talking about why she left me, why she quit the band, maybe even letting on who my real dad is…

the edges of my eyes start to go dark and I have a very Victorian urge to reach for some smelling salts.

It’s just that I’m used to managing my sense of abandonment in small doses.

Like exposure therapy. Every once in a while, I’ll take out my little folder, have a sift through all my Lola stuff and then I lock it away again and move on with my life.

But I can’t pinpoint exactly how I’ll fare coming face to face with the woman who abandoned me as a baby…

who only called once in thirty years… who never visited…

I think I’m hyperventilating.

‘Earth to Lily.’ Seb’s voice makes its way into my brain. He’s followed me upstairs. ‘I’d say you look constipated, but I know how obsessed you are with getting your five a day.’

That’s me. A person who is obsessed with broccoli. And even if it is packed full of nutrients, fibre and natural anti-inflammatories, no one wants to be known as the number one fan of cruciferous vegetables.

Lola seemed to spend most of her band years living off vodka and adrenaline. And not the sort of adrenaline you get when you have a tricky email to reply to. The sort you get when you’re performing for ten thousand people. In short, she’s going to hate me.

‘Lily?’

I think Seb’s frowning. On principle, I’ve made a lifetime habit of never giving people occasion to frown.

‘Sorry.’ I force a smile. ‘I was just having a minute.’

‘You know we don’t have to go?’ he asks, eyeing me warily.

‘We do,’ I say.

Because I have to do something. It’s like when you wear ankle socks with boots, and they roll down your feet and get all annoying.

From the outside everything looks fine, but you know that it isn’t.

You know that it’s a bit of a mess in there and you just want to do whatever you can to reach down and fix it.

That’s how I feel. This trip is me reaching into my boot and pulling my sock up. Or something like that.

‘If you’re sure? You know I’m grateful that you’re trying to help.’

‘I am. Let me get the rest of my stuff. It’s in the spare room.’

Seb eyes the little suitcase by my bed. Objectively, I know that on its own it looks like a reasonable amount of luggage to take on a weekend mini-break.

But I figure that this weekend is already going to be stressful enough, let alone trying to sleep on an unfamiliar pillow without my lavender diffuser and the white noise machine that I need set to volume seven if I have any chance of it not taking me three hours to nod off.

Plus, there’s my products, because my skin goes blotchy unless I follow a meticulous five-step routine, my curling wand and my Frizzease, for obvious reasons.

Okay, it is a lot of stuff. I just want to be prepared.

Seb is back in the kitchen, waiting as I pile all my things at his feet.