Page 19 of The Next Chapter

He grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white.

‘That’s the problem, isn’t it?’ he carries on, a conversation we’ve had a million times before. ‘Who needs us to memorialize their life when they’ve already photographed every last second as it is? By the time all the socially awkward millennials start dying off, there’ll be nothing left to record, and we’ll be out of a business.’

I let him rant, but the thing is, we do offer a service that social media can’t. Seb and I both have history degrees, and we pride ourselves on adding context to people’s life stories. Plus, you get an actual book, not a load of disjointed posts.

Seb’s great-granny was our first client and she’d lived this amazing life fleeing the Nazis and then fostering literally hundreds of children. If we hadn’t written it down, there’s every chance her story would have been lost at some point.

That’s how I know the business means so much to Seb.

And it’s why we can’t let it go under.

We need to convince Lola to let us write her memoirs, that’s all there is to it.

* * *

‘Wow, long drive,’ Seb says, in my opinion, stating the bleeding obvious.

No, that’s not fair. He’s done all the driving. It’s not like we could share it, what with my car sickness. The Skye Bridge connecting the island to mainland Scotland had been a particular low point. Like a rollercoaster if you ask me. And the bloody roof is down again.

I just hadn’t imagined that my grand reunion with Lola would involve quite so much vomit.

‘I know, I don’t think I realized that anywhere in the UK was so far away.’

Eight hours. Eight long hours since we set off. My seaweed thins are long gone. And to think, when I’d found out that Lola lived in Scotland, I’d been surprised by her proximity. But honestly, I could have flown to New York quicker. Not that I’m a person who’s flying to New York on the regular. Or ever. But you get what I mean.

At least it’s been a beautiful drive. That does make a difference, vomiting by a stunning backdrop.

The satnav says that finally, finally, we’re fifteen minutes away.

I click my neck fan back in place, earning myself a side eye from Seb. But my nausea is returning, and for reasons unknown, I’m sweating an awful lot despite the car’s air-con.

I force myself to breathe in and out. To stop staring obsessively at the dot as it moves along the blue line. To take in the scenery.

Lola’s hotel is remote. I already know this from alllll of my Google Earth searches, but somehow being here, it feels even more secluded. Like we’re at the end of the earth almost. That’s how that author had described it at any rate.

That the Isle of Skye is like the edge of everything.

The single road we’re on weaves along the coastal road, as if there’s an invisible tether pulling me towards Lola and her hotel.

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.