Page 60 of Going Solo

Back in the SUV, I stared down at the door handle, rubbing the back of a fingernail across the fabric of the door, letting the weight of what I’d witnessed settle over me.

“Her name’s Iona,” Cole said. “The cancer is in her abdominal cavity. Stage four. Just like Mum.”

Fiona looked up and reached a hand behind her seat. Cole grabbed it and held it.

“She’s twenty-six, Fi. Same as me. Genevieve is four. Four!”

Why had he done this to himself? Was he punishing himself for not being there when Orla died? I wasn’t sure this was healthy.

“The husband was a wreck,” Cole said.

I looked over at him. He was still staring out the window. Glasgow was going past, but he wasn’t looking at it, not taking it in.

“Iona’s mum was lovely. Genevieve’s grandma. She was looking after Genevieve. She said Iona was ‘an OG Kenneddict.’OG. She actually saidOG. Like, how old must she be? Sixty-something?”

Fiona didn’t speak but let Cole hold her hand. I followed her lead and said nothing. If Cole did this everywhere, Fiona and Mitch must have been through this dozens of times. I figured they knew what he needed in this moment. He seemed childlike. Not only because he was holding his sister’s hand but because there was something childlike about the way he was grappling with the idea of mortality. This was so uncomfortable. I was totally baffled about why I was here.

We pulled up outside the Glasgow Arena slightly before ten, as Cole had promised. Nick was already there.

“Thank you for coming,” Cole said. “It means a lot to me that you did.”

I stuck my finger into the door handle and turned to look directly into Cole’s eyes for the first time since we’d left the hospital. “Why did you ask me to come this morning?”

Cole looked surprised. “Did… did you not have a good time?”

“You took me to an oncology department to havea good time?”

“No! It’s… I thought… I mean, we’d been talking about the healing power of music, and?—”

My door swung open without me lifting the handle. Mitch stood on the other side, holding it for me to get out. The sun glinted off something, and I noticed he was wearing a trans flag lapel pin.

“I should go,” I said. “Nick and I have got a four-hour drive ahead of us.”

“No, don’t go!” Cole said. “Come with us in the jet instead. There’s a lot I want to tell you.”

“You’re taking a jet from Glasgow to Manchester?”

“Um… yeah.”

“We will discuss your reckless carbon footprint later,” I said. “But I can’t. The van isn’t modified for Nick to drive.”

“Both come in the jet, then! Pleeeeease.” Cole’s eyes were pleading.

“You’re missing the point. We need to get the van to Manchester for tonight’s show. No van, no show. And if there’s no show, there’s no million quid. Your rules, not mine.”

“Stay right there,” Cole said, opening his car door. “I have an idea.”

ChapterTwenty-Four

Twenty-four hours earlier, if you’d have asked me for the definition of hell, this would have been it. I was bombing down the M74 towards Manchester at fifty miles an hour in PureFM’s knackered old broadcast van, trying not to get blown off the road by crosswinds, with Cole Kennedy sitting beside me in the passenger seat. Cole was bouncing around like a kid on Christmas morning, excited for what he kept calling “our road trip.” I hadn’t wanted to agree to this, but how could I say no to Cole after what I’d witnessed that morning? I had one condition—that he travel incognito.

“Will you pull that hat over your face a bit more,” I said, reaching over and yanking the peak down.

“Stop it!” Cole batted my arm away. “You’re in the slow lane, no one is going to recognise me all the way over here.”

“This isn’t one of your SUVs with blacked-out windows.” Even I could hear the frustration in my voice. “This is an ancient mobile home, it’s ninety per cent glass, and it’s covered from arsehole to breakfast in thePop Reviewlogo. People are going to stare. Everyone stares.”

I knocked the cap down further over Cole’s face.

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