Page 13 of The Next Chapter

I look down at Lola’s address again and blink a couple of times when the words start to swim in front of me.

‘Have you ever been to the Isle of Skye?’ I ask Seb.

‘Fuck no. It’s like, a million miles away. You know that I loathe the outdoors.’

‘This is going really well.’ I sniff. ‘How are you with water sports, then?’ I ask him.

‘Don’t try to change the subject, Lily Brown! But since you asked, I’m not that kinky. For the right man, perhaps I’d give it a go…’

‘Not that kind of water sports, idiot. Lola’s hotel is by a lake, there’s water sports there.’

‘I see. Well, I don’t have any desire to jet-ski. I did used to be a Boy Scout, though.’

‘Of course you did.’

‘But you’re the one who’s always exercising.’

‘I’m not always exercising.’

‘Last weekend, you did yoga for six hours straight.’

‘That was a sponsored event. I told you, Chantelle, Sarah’s best friend’s cousin, is raising money for the polar bears of Nunavut.’

I do so many of these sponsored events that Seb keeps complaining I’m sending him into insolvency.

‘Whatever, babe. All I’m saying is that you’re much more likely to pull off Sporty Spice than me.’

He has a point. I’ve never even seen him in trainers.

‘So, what, you think we just go up to this island in the middle of nowhere,’ I ask, my heart racing hummingbird wing levels of fast, ‘and announce that I’m her long-lost daughter who just happens to work for a business that would quite like to ghost-write her memoirs?’

I ask it like it’s a question but at the same time, I’m dismissing the whole thing. It’s a stupid idea. I might not know Lola, but I know what she’s like. It’s there in print. She’s a famous singer who parties hard. She’s the woman who left me as a baby, called once in thirty years and didn’t answer any of my letters. She will not want to know me.

And then, if I march on up to Scotland and she rejects me as an adult too, well, that would be all sorts of nightmarish. I’d be in therapy for the rest of my life.

And yet, this image I have of Lola… well, I never would have put that Lola somewhere like the Isle of Skye. Somewhere so quiet. In every single YouTube clip of her she’s surrounded by noise. Music, fans, paparazzi. She’s always smiling, too, like she liked it, all the noise.

It never made sense why she just up and quit like she did.

Deep down, I assumed she disappeared so that I wouldn’t ever find her.

‘Or,’ Seb says, shuffling closer to me on the couch. ‘We go up there, pretend we’re on holiday, plead ignorance about knowing that Lola wants her memoirs writing and just play it off as a coincidence. If none of the other agencies even know where she lives, we’d have a massive advantage.’

‘And what about telling her who I am?’

‘You don’t have to tell her. That’s the beauty of it.’ Seb has what I’d describe as his evil genius face on. An eyebrow is arched. ‘You can get to know her a bit, incognito.’

‘That’s a lot of lying to my birth mother.’

‘She did dump you as a baby.’

It’s not a terrible idea. It’s actually far from terrible.

My hands are working my phone, hitting keys with more force than is strictly necessary for a touch screen, as I pull up the booking form for the hotel.

I could finally get some answers. I could see her and maybe hear her side of things without ever having to confront her. I avoid any and all confrontation as a general rule. I could save the business.

I love saving things.