Cecelia Ahern - Lyrebird

‘How will I call you? I don’t have a phone.’

He stalls, the pen hovering over the page.

‘Please stay. I’d like to film tomorrow,’ she says, swallowing nervously. ‘If this is going to happen, it has to happen tomorrow,’ she says, trying to toughen up.

‘We can’t film tomorrow, Laura,’ he says gently. ‘Look, it’s okay. Please calm down. I have to get to my mam’s this weekend. She’s seventy. She lives in Galway, I can’t miss it. Rachel, the one with the camera, her wife is pregnant, she has to get home to her, and Bo, she’s the director, producer, she’s got a lot of work to do for next week, planning, paperwork, a lecture, that kind of thing. We need more equipment, there’s paperwork to be done, permission to be granted, there’s no way we could start tomorrow.’

‘Can I go with you?’ she asks.

He stares at her in shock, unable to think of how to reply. ‘You want to…’

‘Can I stay with you? I can’t stay here any more. It’s all been changed. I have to… change with the changes.’

She’s panicking, her mind working overtime.

‘Relax, Laura, it’s okay, everything’s okay, nothing’s changed.’ He goes to her, holds her by her arms, gently, tries to get her to look at him. His heart is pounding; just feeling her is sending him into a spin. She looks at him and those grassy eyes probe into him, into his very soul.

‘My dad’s dead,’ she looks at him, eyes piercing. ‘My dad is dead. And I never even called him dad. I never even knew if he knew that I was his daughter. We never even…’ The tears spill down her cheeks.

‘Oh, come here,’ he whispers, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close to him so that her head is against his chest and she is completely enveloped in his love and care.

‘How can a place be a home if no one wants you there?’ she asks through her tears. ‘This is not a home.’

He can’t answer that.

He’s the only person she knows. He can’t leave her here.

‘What. The. Fuck,’ Bo says, sitting up, as Solomon walks towards her and Rachel with bags in his hands, closely followed by Laura.

‘She’s coming with us,’ he says, avoiding Bo’s stare, as he puts the bags in the boot of the car.

‘What?’ Bo joins him.

‘She’s scared here. She doesn’t want to wait on her own until we get back. I wonder who scared the shit out of her, Bo,’ he says through his teeth at her, the veins pulsating in his neck. He’s really angry.

‘But – you have to go to your parents’ house.’

‘Yes, and I’ll have to take her with me. She won’t go with you to Dublin,’ he mutters, trying to slot her shopping bags and suitcase into the boot among their recording equipment.

He waits for Bo to tell him no way, this is ridiculous, she is not allowing her boyfriend to travel with a young, beautiful strange woman to his family party, but instead when he looks up, she’s grinning broadly.

‘Laura,’ she calls, holding two thumbs up. ‘This is the best news. The best .’

‘Snow White!’ Bo announces, slamming her beer bottle down on the table in the hotel bar, more loudly than she’d intended.

Rachel laughs. Solomon shakes his head and reaches for the bowl of peanuts.

‘Seriously, she’s like a real-life Snow White,’ she says excitedly. ‘I could definitely pitch that. Lives in the forest, sings to the fucking animals.’

Solomon and Rachel can’t help but laugh at that, and at Bo’s intensity. Bo’s tipsy, her eyes are shining, her cheeks are rosy as they discuss plans for the documentary. Instead of going home, Bo managed to talk Rachel into staying for two more days. They’ll stay at the hotel in Gougane Barra for two nights, film during the day at the cottage, go their separate ways for the weekend, return to Cork on Sunday night. She can’t help herself and her excitement is contagious, both Solomon and Rachel find it impossible to say no. Laura is upstairs in her bedroom, a connecting room to theirs, which they’d filmed her entering. Bo had filmed everything. Laura’s first baby-steps into the big bad world, not that there had been anything dramatic to capture. Laura hadn’t been raised by wolves, she knew how to handle herself. Everything remained inside of her, contained. Rachel captured Laura sitting in the car, for the first time in ten years, the cottage disappearing in the background behind the bat house. Laura didn’t look back, though she mimicked the engine starting up. When Laura left the Toolin property her face never changed. She quietly, slowly absorbed everything around her; it was calming to watch, as hypnotic as watching a new born baby. And while everything seemed locked inside of her, her sounds seeped out and revealed a little about her.

‘I feel like we have a child,’ Bo had joked to Solomon, about the connecting room, before shuddering.

‘If Laura is Snow White, who is the evil witch who locked her up?’ Rachel asks.

‘Her grandmother,’ Solomon replies, his tongue feeling loose. Considering he’d been falling asleep all day, he’s wide awake now. ‘But not evil. If anything, well-intentioned.’

‘All evil people think they’re well-intentioned in some shape or form,’ Bo says. ‘Manson thought his murders would precipitate the apocalyptic race war… What about Rapunzel?’

‘What about Mowgli?’ Rachel jokes.

Bo ignores her. ‘Trapped in a cottage, on the top of a mountain, cut off from the world. And she has long blonde hair and is beautiful,’ she adds. ‘Not that it should make a difference, but it does and we all know it.’ She points a finger in both Solomon and Rachel’s faces to prevent them from objecting, not that they were going to.

‘I don’t know why you’re going for Disney movies,’ Rachel says. ‘Is it a commercial thing?’

‘Because this feels fairytale-like. Laura has that ethereal feel, other-worldly, don’t you think?’

Of course Solomon agrees, he’s felt that all along and perhaps he was wrong, foolish even, to think that he was the only one who was affected by Laura.

‘She talks to animals and birds,’ Bo offers. ‘That’s quite Disney.’

‘De Niro talked to the mirror,’ Rachel suggests. ‘Shirley Valentine to the wall.’

‘Not quite the same thing,’ Bo smiles.

‘She doesn’t talk to them, she imitates them,’ Solomon explains. ‘There’s a difference.’

‘The imitator. The imita tress .’

‘Gendered titles, from a feminist such as yourself. You should be ashamed,’ Rachel teases, signalling the barman for another round.

‘Echoes of Laura.’

‘Perfect,’ Rachel says. ‘For True Movies.’

‘She mimics,’ Solomon says, thinking aloud. ‘She repeats things that she hasn’t heard before, a few times, until she gets it right. Maybe it’s to understand them. She makes distressed sounds when she feels endangered, like the barking, growling, car alarm sounds when we first met her. She associates those sounds with danger or defence.’

They’re both hanging on to his analysis.

‘Interesting,’ Rachel nods along. ‘I hadn’t realised there was a language to it.’

‘Hadn’t you?’ Solomon asks. It had seemed clear to him. The sounds were all different. Sympathetic when whimpering with Mossie, defensive, on the attack when she was surrounded. Mimicking Solomon’s throat-clearing when she recognises when he’s uncomfortable or generally an uncomfortable situation. The sounds make sense to him. Entirely peculiar, but there seems to be a pattern to them.