Page 30 of The Next Chapter

Jesus, poor kid. I do my biggest smile at him, to let him know that it’s okay. The humidity and no small amount of terror is making my hair frizz like there’s no tomorrow and so there’s a good chance I’m damaging him further. Still, he does a small smile back, so hopefully not.

‘Let’s head on down to the kayaks,’ Lola calls to everyone.

I follow the group, dragging my feet as much as possible and only just stopping myself from agreeing with Harper who declares loudly that this is ‘a stupid fucking idea’.

I come to stand in front of a kayak (or, as I like to think of it, coffin), the last in the line. It’s… very small. I have short legs and I don’t see how they’re going to go in there. I look at Seb stood next to me. He’ll have to fold himself in half.

A couple of people along, Noah has pushed his sunglasses down now that the sun is brighter. He’s helping Blake tighten the straps on his life jacket in a way that’s disarmingly sweet.

I make a mental note not to pay him one bit of attention while we’re out on the loch. He’s very distracting and I’ll drown.

He catches me looking, meeting my eyes.

I’ll definitely drown.

Instead, I focus on Lola, who is running through what I consider to be a very brief safety demonstration. It’s hard to pay attention to what she’s saying. I’m distracted by the fact that that’s my birth mum. Right there! Standing barefoot on the edge of a worn wooden deck.

I zone back in as she assures us that we shouldn’t go under, but that if we do roll, we’ll pop back up the other side. I deduce from this that Lola has adopted the same cavalier approach to health and safety that she did to parenting and go about tightening the straps on my life jacket with a vengeance.

Once it’s so tight that I can hardly breathe, I follow everyone else, my knees weak as I tug my kayak by a little rope to the edge of the water and make an awful job of climbing in.

Lola, already out on the loch, looks like she was born there. She’s completely relaxed, bobbing just a little while she watches us all. All those articles about her singing voice, her partying, her stardom and not one of them mentioned her kayaking prowess.

Seb, too, seems to have no trouble. He’s out on the loch before I even have a foot in my kayak, looking like he’s in the middle of a Gucci shoot. Traitor.

I manage to get my legs in. Definitely coffin like. But once they’re inside I’m beached on the pebbly shore. I try to bum shuffle, that’s what people always did on the videos. Probably I’m not shuffling hard enough, because I’m stuck here.

‘Here, I’ll give you a hand.’

Noah, also already in the water, is tugging at the end of my rope and I’m moving.

‘I don’t know how I got stuck here!’ I think I’m speaking too loudly.

I let out a sigh of relief as with one final tug, I start to float. I’d had some serious doubts that this glorified bottle could manage it, but the sudden feeling of weightlessness would suggest that I’m doing it, I’m bobbing on the loch.

I think I’m going to vomit. How am I meant to pitch the memoirs thing to Lola if I spend every day up here puking?

The loch looks still, so why am I moving? I look around, sure that other people aren’t bobbing quite so much. Instead, everyone else is watching Lola as she demonstrates how to use the paddle. She’s going round in a circle now and I didn’t think that was a skill set we’d be needing.

Everyone else turns in a circle. Well, everyone except Harper. She’s bobbing on the water, her paddle across her lap, looking positively thunderous. Blake is in a two-person kayak with his foster dad. He’s smiling, a fact which seems to make Harper even angrier.

I’m frozen with fear.

‘All right?’ Noah is next to me.

‘Perfect, thanks, raring to get going.’ Noah smiles and looks at my hands where they’re white knuckling my paddle, so it’s possible he can see through me.

‘Are we all ready?’ Lola calls.

I get that it’s not a question we’re meant to shout, ‘no!’ to, but that’s what I want to do. I haven’t attempted one of those circle things. I daren’t even look at the water. I already can’t see the bottom and imagining all the giant fish that’re underneath me is not helping my nerves one bit. I’ve seen Blue Planet. You know those fish that live at the bottom of the ocean with massive teeth and dead eyes? I bet there’s one of them down there.

Breathing short little breaths and trying not to imagine falling foul of the dead-eyed fish, I manage to get my kayak moving, copying Noah. His paddles seem to be generating an awful lot less water than mine. Seb was right, his biceps are impressive. There’s a vein running down the centre of one of them. Wow.

I can’t get distracted by the bicep vein, though. Not when even Harper is now prowling through the water like a hungry crocodile, eyes focused on some unknown spot on the horizon. She’s already abandoned our plan to stick together.

I mostly seem to be soaking myself. Every time I lift my paddle, half the loch comes with it, dousing my trouser shorts. I think it’s because my arms are shaking so badly.

I try to zone in to Lola as she tells us all about the mountains, but looking up at them where they encircle the loch makes me almost topple over and so I resolve to keep my eyes firmly water level.