Page 128 of The Next Chapter

She doesn’t speak for a minute, and I think stony silence it is. Until eventually she says, ‘Lola said that she’s your mum. Your real mum.’

‘Is that what Lola said?’ I ask.

Harper shrugs. ‘She said she gave birth to you and gave you up for adoption.’

I nod. ‘That’s right. My real mum died when I was eighteen, though. Lola’s my birth mum.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Sometimes, the people who give birth to us, they’re not meant to be our parents. It might not be their fault, or it might be, but it has nothing to do with us.’ I hope Harper gets what I’m saying. I’m not being particularly subtle about it, so chances are she will.

‘It’s still fucking shit, though.’

‘Yep,’ I agree. ‘It is. I spent a lot of time trying to pretend it was okay when really, I should have just admitted how angry I was.’

‘I can’t imagine you angry. You’re all weirdly nice.’

‘I don’t get angry much, but sometimes I wanted to scream about how unfair it all was.’

For dramatic effect, I do a small shout across the water.

‘It’s fucking shit!’

My strange shout makes Harper laugh. I think it’s maybe the first time I’ve ever heard her laugh properly. She sounds so young.

She slaps a hand across her mouth, like she can’t believe the noise that she just made.

That makes me laugh and then we’re both laughing, our legs still hanging down.

‘I feel angry too,’ Harper adds, even though she’s smiling. I don’t tell her that this is news to literally no one, because then she shouts too, louder than I did.

‘I’m sorry that I scared everyone.’ Her voice is small now.

‘It’s okay, Harper. So long as you’re okay. I know that things can be unfair sometimes.’

I shout again, getting louder still and then suddenly, between laughs, we’re both shouting about how unfair life can be.

I’m breathless and my stomach squeezes from laughing so much but it’s cathartic, all the shouting. My voice is halfway to hoarse when I say to Harper, ‘I really am sorry that I left.’

She shrugs and bumps her shoulder against mine. ‘You came back, that’s what matters.’

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Next Chapter – One Year Later

‘Come on, Lily, step out of your comfort zone.’ Harper’s face is half submerged in water. It’s giving Jaws.

‘See, that’s what I don’t get. Why would anyone want to step out of their comfort zone? The devil’s in the detail. Comfort zone,’ I emphasize.

My own comfort zone feels about a million miles away right now, but I can’t help but smile when Noah laughs, his head bobbing in the water like a bloody buoy.

In fact, they’re all bobbing in the water. Lola, Harper, Noah, Ashton, James, Harper’s foster dad, Jake. He’s friends with Noah now. They’re here as often as we are. Even Seb is floating on his back, his sunglasses still in position.

I peer over the edge of the rowboat we’d rowed, for some ungodly reason, into the middle of the deep loch of doom. And even though after extensive googling, I can’t actually attribute a single death to its murky waters, someone always has to be the first.

‘She doesn’t have to come in if she doesn’t want to.’ Noah splashes a bit of water towards Harper. It’s been one of the best things about this last year, watching Harper’s confidence grow. She’s been, there’s no other word for it… pleasant at times. We’re taking some time to adjust.

Noah had helped a lot too, which is good since she’s always been consistently nicer to him than anyone else. Anyway, he doesn’t splash her enough to drown her, but enough to encourage her to launch all-out water-based war on him.

While Harper’s occupied trying to dunk the love of my life, Lola swims over to the rowboat.

‘Are there a lot of fish, do you think?’ I ask her, peering over the edge into the darkness.