Page 79 of Going Solo

Cole’s shoulders started to shake, and a laugh rumbled up from his belly. “Maybe. Maybe not. If you behave, you’ll find out. Come on, start the van. We’ve got places to be.”

* * *

As we drove up the M4 towards the bridge over the River Severn, which would take us up to Birmingham, Cole told me how the WebFlix producers had followed a paper trail through local councils, fostering agencies, social services, and emigration records to track down his birth parents. His birth mum’s name was Marie Everest. She came from Ipswich.

“She was seventeen when she fell pregnant,” Cole said. “Her parents wouldn’t let her keep me.”

“Were they religious?”

“I don’t know. I think it might also have been about my dad.”

Cole scratched at the thick black hair on his forearms.

“You mean his skin colour?” I asked.

“The producers said I’d have to ask Marie for the details when we met in person. But they did tell me that he was Turkish. He was also seventeen, and they met at the local kebab shop where he worked.”

“So, you’re Turkish?”

“According to the DNA test I did, I’m Turkish, Iranian, Syrian, Georgian, you name it.”

“Your birth dad, do they know what happened to him?”

Cole went quiet. “I don’t have all the details. They’ve confirmed he died, though. A motorcycle accident. Before I was born. I don’t even know if he knew he was going to be a dad. I wondered if that might be why Marie decided to give me up.”

I reached over a hand, and Cole grabbed it, squeezing it.

“How do you feel about it all?”

Cole shrugged. “It is what it is. I can’t change the fact he’s dead or that my mother put me up for adoption. I had a brilliant childhood. I love my parents. There’s no space for regret, you know?”

“But you must be feeling something.”

“I am, obviously,” he said. “But my therapist, Summer, says we can’t change the past, so have to learn to sit with the discomfort the past has left us. If we let it weigh us down, it’ll only make us unhappy in the moment we’re in. And every moment is a new moment. So, while you should acknowledge the discomfort, you have to live in the moment. That’s the only thing that’s real. The past, the future, they’re not real. All we have is this moment.”

I’d never thought of the world like that before. All the countless hours I’d wasted worrying over everything that had gone down, or what the future might hold. If someone had taught me years ago to see the world like this, I might not have spent so much of my life doing my own head in. That said, I was willing to bet living in the moment was harder than it sounded.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you last night,” I said, glancing across at Cole.

“It’s OK,” he said. “Last night is also in the past. Fi was there. And Chase. I was well looked after.”

“All the same, I’m sorry.”

We drove across the Prince of Wales Bridge, and a comfortable silence fell between us. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the wide silver ribbon of the River Severn shimmered to the north and to the south of us. Behind us, a string of black SUVs shadowed us. As we came off the bridge, a sign said it was forty-seven miles to Stonehenge. Cole practically bounced out of his seat.

“Oh my God, we have got to go to Stonehenge.”

I glanced over at him. “It’s a hundred miles out of our way.”

“Live in the moment, Toby! Come on!”

“You’re onstage in nine hours.”

“That’s plenty of time.”

“And I’m on air in five. Inthisvan. I can’t afford to miss a show, because someone put a condition in my contract that says if I miss a show, my network doesn’t get our million quid.”

“That was Fiona,” Cole said. “It’s a gorgeous day. Come on. I want to feel the sun on my face and the grass under my feet.”

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