Page 31 of The Next Chapter

Lola stops paddling, floating a little while she points out some rare species of flora on the banks. We’re basically a hundred metres from where we set off and I’m already drained. This isn’t helping to answer any of my questions about Lola. If anything, it’s just highlighting the differences between us far more starkly. Lobbing them out there for the world to see. Even if we’re not different in the way I expected us to be, we’re definitely different.

‘Isn’t nature just totally, like, awe-inspiring?’ Seb drawls like an American cheerleader, gliding up next to me and looking like he was born in a fucking kayak.

Objectively, it is beautiful. The sky is cloudless, and the local mountains rise majestically against its backdrop. Trees are scattered around the edge of the loch. It’s gorgeous. Postcard worthy. Instagrammable. It’s not just that, though. It’s hard to describe, but Skye seems like extra wild somehow. I’ve been to the Lake District. I’m not completely unfamiliar with the natural world. But other places seem tame, compared to the wilds of Skye. Like the difference between seeing a tiger in the jungle and seeing one in a zoo.

‘I’m more of a city person,’ I whisper.

‘Yep, me too,’ he agrees. ‘If it makes you feel better, Noah keeps looking at you,’ Seb then mutters out of the side of his mouth.

I immediately swivel my head around to find him. He’s talking to Blake and his foster dad. He tilts his head back a little and laughs at something their foster dad says.

‘Ah!’ I call as my kayak bobs violently.

‘Please, be more obvious about it.’ Seb steadies my kayak.

‘He does not.’

‘He does.’

‘He’s probably worried he’ll have to rescue me when I go under.’

‘Maybe. We should try to talk to Lola when we can.’ Seb glides off, distinctly predatory.

I’ll have to leave Lola to him for now, since my own efforts are probably best spent concentrating on not drowning. It’s a lot trying to do that, while also taking in what your long-lost birth mum is saying about the local geology at the same time. I think I catch the words ‘former glacier’, but I can’t be sure.

‘That’s Blà Bheinn,’ Lola says, pointing up to her right at one of the taller mountains in the distance. ‘Over two thousand feet of climb. But you’ll not find a better view on a morning than from the top, ’specially if it’s a clear day.’

Oh good, there’s my vomit once more.

Noah hangs back again to check that I’m okay, and I have a sinking feeling that he’s been dispatched by Lola to keep an eye on the woman straggling along at the back.

Seb is way off the mark about Noah looking at me. And anyway, I’m almost certain that my future husband will be into indoor sports. Colin had a squash buddy.

The only person seemingly having less fun than me is Harper. Every time Blake lifts his arms up like he’s having fun, or smiles a big toothy grin, she looks like she wants to murder her foster dad with her bare hands. It’s probably a good thing that there’s a whole heap of loch between them.

With some effort and a fair bit of splashing, I make my way over to her.

‘Everything okay?’ I pant, annoyed that all the sponsored exercise I do doesn’t seem to have made one iota of difference to my arm strength.

She side eyes me. We’re bobbing again and I think Lola is talking about a secret loch somewhere behind a line of trees.

‘You look like a drowned rat,’ Harper says.

‘Trust me, I feel like one.’ She gives me a dirty look and paddles away.

‘Sorry,’ her foster mum, Sharon, I think she’s called, mouths to me from the other side of the group. I wave it away because it really doesn’t matter. And anyway, I don’t want to admit that I’m drawn to Harper’s overt hatred of everyone and everything. That would be exceptionally strange, even by my low standards.

We carry on. Lola’s predictions that none of us would fall in turn out to be right. Even when I get a precarious wobble going trying to eat my second all-bran breakfast bar, I don’t topple over.

I struggle along behind the pack, hearing maybe one word in ten that Lola says about the local area and reminding myself that I’ll never have to step foot in a kayak again after today.

I do notice that Lola has spoken to everyone in the group aside from me. That’s the sort of thing you notice when you can’t stop looking at someone. The whole time, I’ve been conscious of where she is, looking for some sign that there’s common ground between us. Like, does she snort when she laughs sometimes? Or does her fringe have a mind of its own too?

So far, I’ve got nothing. I mean, Lola has a fringe, a blonde one tinged with grey. But it just sits straight and obedient, a little bit wispy. Nothing at all like the out-of-control frizz magnet that sometimes graces my forehead.

She’s chatting now to the middle-aged man who’s here with his wife. I know for a fact that she’s already spoken to him once, I’ve seen it. At least Seb has managed to talk to her. I could hear him declaring loudly that we were the foremost personal memoir ghost writing business in the North of England. Which is true. We also happen to be the only personal memoir ghost writing business in the North of England.

‘How did it go?’ I whisper when he paddles over to me.