Page 9 of The Next Chapter

Fields with long grass stretch out before us, touching the feet of mountains. So many mountains. We’ve passed more than one sign for Broadford. The small town that Lola’s hotel is near.

We turn, heading inland, away from the coastal town.

According to the website, Lola’s hotel is a couple of miles from town, set next to a loch, a fact I really don’t enjoy.

I just don’t like lochs or lakes full stop.

All eerie and still, as if you could drown and no one would ever realize.

Looking at the satnav, there are little bodies of water hidden away in the mountains, too.

How does Lola live here of all places? Whenever I’d imagined her over the years, she was living in some ridiculous hotel suite, you know the sort that have their own dining rooms with chandeliers.

Or at the very least, I’d pictured her in some country pile with a helipad on the roof.

Not here . We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere.

‘Are you okay?’ Seb asks. ‘You can change your mind.’

I shake my head, having lost the ability to form any words.

Maybe it’s the setting or maybe it’s the fact that I know for sure that I’m closer now to Lola than I’ve been in the last thirty years, but I want to finish this. To see with my own eyes that she exists.

‘I want to keep going.’

We round the final bend, and I can see the hotel just up ahead.

It’s bigger than it looks in the pictures, more sprawling.

We get closer still and I can make out that the white paint on its walls is chipped and crumbling.

It looks like it might once have been a grand house.

Out front there’s a wide veranda with ornate white wooden pillars.

A red, hand-painted sign that’s hanging on by a single nail reads, ‘Broadford Hotel’.

Does what it says on the tin, I suppose.

My heart is drumming a persistent hard beat as we pull into the little car park out front, the tyres crunching over loose stones. I sit on my hands, not moving, just looking.

To the side of the hotel there’s a wooden pier jutting out onto the loch, kayaks bobbing in the water next to it.

On the bank, there’s an enormous willow tree, its branches sweeping the ground.

The lake, I mean loch, itself is huge and dark and still, with a pebbly shore where there’s a big wooden shed.

Seb opens his door and on autopilot I do the same. The front porch has a string of bulbs wound around the two wooden pillars either side of the steps. It’s taken us so long to get here that the sun is setting and one set flickers feebly to light as we watch. The other doesn’t even try.

Once again, I’m struck by the fact that this is the last place on earth I’d expect to find Lola Starr.

‘Is that a…?’ Seb’s voice trails off as a chicken picks its way in front of the car. At least I think it’s a chicken. It only has feathers on one side of its body and its eyes are shut. It’s in an even worse state than Elton.

‘Where are we?’ Seb asks as the chicken stumbles its way to the other side of the car park.

‘I don’t know,’ I answer, peering around. It’s eerily quiet.

On the other side next to the loch there’s the hotel shop. Another glorified rickety shed with an honesty box outside. It’s all very, very surreal.

‘We can leave our bags while we check in,’ Seb says, and it’s a good idea. I don’t want to meet Lola carrying a cool bag full of probiotics after all.

Thank God this plan doesn’t involve telling her who I am. I’d just explode from the stress of it all.

I nod, telling myself that I need to get my shit together.

We head over to the steps to the porch. It’s still sweltering outside but the skin on my arms is pebbled, and it feels like my hair is full of static, as if I’m on charge somehow.

‘Here we go,’ Seb says, pushing the glass-panelled door to the hotel open with his shoulder and then bracing himself as it all but falls off on him. He gestures me through.

My feet are moving. I hardly notice the small reception area, the wood desk stacked with a mishmash of leaflets, the woman stood behind it, her long blonde hair in a thick plait slung over one shoulder.

‘Welcome to Broadford Hotel,’ she says as I stop dead in front of her.

As I stand by in front of the desk looking at Lola, it seems impossible that no one has ever figured out that this is the Lola Starr, even if she is going by Lola Vain these days. She must be around fifty now, but it’s the same face I’ve stared at countless times in magazines.

Her face is the only thing that’s as I imagined, though, everything else is just off .

I expected… I don’t know that I expected high heels and big hair out here on the Isle of Skye, but I didn’t expect green Crocs and dirt engrained hands. Gone are the sharp eyes half smiling at cameras in countless paparazzi photos. Here, Lola’s eyes are soft, creased at the edges.

A barrage of emotions slam into me, fighting for dominance. Anger, because how can she have just been here, all this time? Relief – we found her! Surprise, disbelief, happiness. The torrent renders me basically mute as I stare at the person who gave birth to me.

‘Thank you,’ I hear Seb say. ‘We’re happy to be here, aren’t we, Lily?’

For a split second, Lola’s eyes meet mine and I think the whole thing must be written all over my face because she looks at me intently.

I should have gone with a different name!

What if she knows my name? Mum and Dad said that they named me, but what if they let her have some say?

I go to speak but she’s turning her back to us, pulling some paperwork and a set of keys from a shelf on the wall there.

Seb gives me a ‘what the fuck’ look, tilting his head towards her.

Suddenly, I’m overcome by the urge to tell her who I am. Ask why she left.

It’s not at all part of the plan. But I want to ask why she ignored my letters. Ask why she didn’t try harder.

The questions I’ve had, this, now is my chance to find out the answers.

I take a deep breath and meet her eyes. This is my chance.

And I just… can’t. Everything is wrong. Lola Starr looks nothing like the superstar I always pictured.

Lola Starr, the girl in the orange dress, glamorous, famous and shiny – the person I’d pictured myself putting all these questions to – simply doesn’t exist. The woman in front of me is wearing dungarees, for god’s sake.

‘Yeah, really happy,’ I blurt. Lola’s eyes are still boring into me. Oh god, does she know? Is she on to me? Is it the name thing? My heart speeds up, it’s going impossibly fast as I crash headfirst into panic mode.

‘I’m Lily… and this is… this is my twin brother, Seb.’

Seb’s eyes go wide as Lola pulls her gaze away from mine.

I don’t know what I’m saying, I just need to throw her off. Maybe I imagine it, but she drops her head a little, giving it a small shake before she speaks again.

‘That’s nice. Well, y’all are very welcome. There’s spare bedding in the cottage if one of you wants to take the sofa bed.’

‘Good idea,’ Seb says, still glaring at me. ‘We shared a womb once, but we’re not Game of Thrones close, if you get me?’

Lola laughs.

‘You’re all paid up for three nights,’ she says.

‘The cottage is a whole lot nicer than the bedrooms, just don’t tell my other guests.

’ She does a soft chuckle. Her voice still has a faint American accent to it, the twang of the south, but it’s being crowded out by Scottish more often than not.

She’s wearing a loose white shirt underneath her denim overalls.

I pull at my fan collar, realizing that it’s stopped working.

‘This is the hotel timetable.’ She slides a sheet of A4 paper towards us.

It has a table on it with the days of the week at the top.

I love a good timetable, who doesn’t? I mean this one isn’t colour coded, so it could be better, but it is pretty full.

Kayaking, painting, hiking, yoga, skydiving… I do a double take. Skydiving.

It has never, ever made sense to me, why some humans throw themselves out of a plane. Sometimes, we really need to know our limits as a species. And if we were meant to fly, we’d have wings.

Lola is still talking. ‘You’re welcome to drive to town to eat if you like.

It’s just ten minutes back the way you came.

They have some great seafood restaurants there or The Broadford Inn does the best neep and tatties if that’s what takes your fancy.

We serve a continental breakfast each mornin’, seven through ten.

Most folk like the porridge the best. And the cottage has a small kitchenette too. You’ll have seen the shop out front.’

Seb peers down at the paper.

‘Look, Lily,’ he says, ‘there’s wild swimming Thursday mornings.

It’s a shame we’ll miss that. It’s her favourite.

’ He’s smirking at me. Knob. He knows how I feel about wild swimming.

His remark does relax me enough to manage a small, ‘thank you,’ to Lola, as I take the timetable and fold it in half.

‘No problem. If you need anything else, just holler.’

A blond Labrador comes out of what must be a small office behind the desk and starts panting at Lola’s feet.

She reaches down absentmindedly to stroke behind its ear.

I watch the whole thing with rapt attention.

‘I’m always around,’ Lola carries on, oblivious to me gawping at her.

‘And Noah’s in the cottage next door. He knows the place as well as I do.

’ She shuffles some papers on the countertop, straightening them.

‘This Noah you speak of,’ Seb asks. ‘Any chance he’s a lumberjack?’

Something about the name Noah rings a distant bell at the back of my brain.

Lola laughs again. At least she and Seb are getting on well. I’m mostly just standing here with my mouth hanging open, having well and truly lost the plot.