Page 92 of The Next Chapter

I’d never cared so much about what I looked like. We all looked poor back home. Even my nice thrift store clothes weren’t real nice. They were just better than something that had been handed down four times already. But on my way to meet the rest of the band, I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d think of me. Every person we passed on the sidewalk looked real beautiful. I didn’t think I looked much like a lead singer. I definitely didn’t look like Gwen Stefani.

I started to worry that even if it wasn’t a mistake, me being here, the rest of the band wouldn’t want me. That they’d take one look at me and send me straight back on the tin can in the sky.

‘Relax, Lola,’ Jimmy told me when we got to this block of flats, ‘you’re gonna do just fine. You’re special, I can tell.’

And when Jimmy told me to relax, I did, for a little bit at least. He had this way of making you do whatever he asked. The flat wasn’t in a high rise or anything, just two floors. It looked new then, but I imagine it’s dated a fair bit since. I followed Jimmy up some steps and waited while he banged on a black door.

When it opened, there were two people stood there. A boy and a girl, both smiling. They didn’t look that much different to me, their clothes were tatty too.

‘Say hi to Lola,’ Jimmy told them.

‘Hi, Lola,’ they said, and I dared step inside after that.

‘Is this everyone?’ I asked Jimmy. Maybe it was daft not to have asked how many people were in the band before now, but I’d been so focused on just getting there, I didn’t ask anywhere near enough questions.

‘I’m Prune,’ the girl said. ‘I play the keyboard.’

‘Shawn.’ That was the boy. ‘Bass.’ He pointed at himself. ‘Ashton is here somewhere. ASHTON,’ he shouted, way too loud for the tiny flat.

And this Ashton, he came wandering out of what I guessed was his bedroom, rubbing his eyes. ‘Jet lag is the worst,’ he grumbled in a funny accent before he realized I was there. His hair was long and stuck up all over the place, where he’d been asleep.

He scratched his stomach, and his T-shirt rode up a bit. He was tall and skinny, like someone stretched him out. He moved next to Prune and Shawn and smiled at me too. I remember thinking that he had a kind smile and maybe this really would work out.

‘That’s all of you,’ Jimmy said, looking around at where we were stood in a sort of circle by the door. ‘We’ll give you the rest of the day to settle in, Lola, but then you’re all due down the studio tomorrow. We’ll send a car, be ready for eight.’

I realized then that Jimmy was leaving, and I didn’t want him to go.

‘Wait,’ I called when he turned to leave me. Us, he turned to leave us.

‘Er, what’re we gonna be called, the band, I mean?’ I asked the first thing that came into my head.

‘Beyond Baton Rouge.’ Jimmy winked at me. ‘And you guys are going to be stars.’

* * *

‘So, that’s how you met Ashton?’

Lola nods. ‘That’s right, we stayed friends, after all these years.’

God, if Ashton’s my biological dad, does that mean that Lola’s been pining for him for all these years? Poor Lola. She tells me she’ll be right back, and I don’t know if she needs a moment, just like I do, because she disappears into the hotel, emerging a couple of minutes later with a glass bottle full of orange juice and two glasses. She sets them down on the stripy blanket. All I need is a parasol and it’ll be like I’m being courted in the nineteenth century.

I think this might well be the first time I’ve ever seen Lola relax.

‘Didn’t Ashton do Strictly ages ago?’ I ask, ending the recording on my phone. I’d watched that series with Mum, on edge the whole time. Seeing him had made the whole thing real and I’d been worried that someone was going to come and take me away from Mum and Dad.

Lola nods and smiles a little. ‘He did. Came third, I think.’ She pours some juice in one of the glasses and has a sip.

‘He got knocked out with his rhumba.’

‘They all do,’ Lola answers.

‘I know, right. So unfair.’

‘He’s from here,’ she volunteers. ‘Ashton, I mean. He grew up in Glasgow, but he had an aunt out here. So it was him who showed me Skye and I went and fell right in love with it straight away.’

Oh my god. It must be him, then. Ashton must be my dad. Shit. Shit. Shit.

‘He did?’ I ask, sounding like I’m dying of heat exhaustion. Which if this heatwave doesn’t let up, I might well be.