Cecelia Ahern - Lyrebird

‘No one is sleeping on the couch,’ she says firmly. ‘Particularly not my own son. I haven’t planned this for a year to end up with people on couches.’

As the owner of an eight-bedroom guesthouse, Solomon’s mother is a nurturer, a feeder, someone who insists on others’ comfort almost to the point of their own discomfort. Always putting herself last. But as welcoming as she is, she’s old-fashioned in her views: none of her children are allowed to share a room with girlfriends or boyfriends until they are married.

‘When you meet her, you’ll understand. She’s different.’

‘Is she now?’

‘Not like that.’ He smiles.

‘We’ll see,’ she says easily, with a laugh that’s trapped in her words. ‘We’ll see.’

Solomon ends the call and waits for Laura. They’ll see, indeed. Laura is standing beside the roadwork traffic cones, where four men in high-vis jackets and jeans below the cracks of their arses attempt to work while she stands beside them mimicking the sound of the jackhammer.

When she sees that Solomon is off the phone, and content her mimicry has been perfected, she joins him.

‘We’re going to get in the car now and continue our drive to Galway, if there’s anything else you’d like to stop and see or hear, feel free. In fact, do it as much as you like because the longer it takes us to get there, the longer it takes us to get there.’

She smiles. ‘You’re lucky to have your family, Sol,’ she says in Bo’s voice.

‘Say it your way,’ he says.

‘Solomon,’ she says, and he smiles.

Every time he connects with her he has to purposefully de-link himself. It happens a lot. Then just as he’s in the process of untwining his soul from hers, she mimics his awkward throat-clear and he laughs.

They return to the car that Solomon abandoned in an awkward position when she decided to flee the vehicle while stopped at red lights to explore the source of the jackhammer.

‘What is a lyrebird?’ she asks as they drive.

He looks at her quickly, then back to the road ahead of him.

‘I heard Bo say it when she was on the phone. She found a lyrebird. Is that me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why does she call me that?’

‘It’s the title of the documentary. A lyrebird is a bird that lives in Australia and is famous for mimicking sounds.’ What he really wants to say, what he had planned to say, was, It’s one of the most beautiful and rare and the most intelligent of all the world’s wild creatures. He’d come across that in his research, he’d planned to tell her that, but now he can’t get the words out. He’d spent a good deal of time reading up about the curious bird ever since Bo had decided on the name. It’s the first time he has raised the issue of her mimicry, and he’s too nervous that she may take offence to the comparison. There’s been no sign so far of her acknowledging her own sounds, even as only moments ago a crowd had gathered around her to watch her mimicking the jackhammer.

‘Look’ – he searches through his phone, one hand on the steering wheel, one eye on the road. He hands her the short video of the bird that he came across on YouTube. He struggles to watch her reaction as he drives, thinking Bo will be upset with him for not capturing this moment on camera. She smiles as the bird mimics other birds from the platform that it builds in the woods.

‘Why does it do it?’ she asks, which is a question that intrigues Solomon. He’d love to ask her the same thing.

‘To attract a mate,’ he explains.

Laura looks at him and those eyes almost make him crash into the car that has stopped at the lights in front of him. He clears his throat and brakes hard.

‘The male lyrebirds sing during mating season. He builds a platform in the forest, like a mound, and he stands on it to sing. The females are attracted to the sound.’

‘So I’m a male bird looking for a good time,’ Laura says, scrunching her face up.

‘We’ll claim artistic licence.’

She watches the video of the bird some more and when he starts making the sounds of chainsaws, and then a camera shutter, she starts laughing, louder and larger than Solomon has ever heard her before.

‘Whose idea was it to call me this?’ she giggles, wiping her teared-up eyes.

‘Mine,’ he says, self-consciously, taking the phone from her.

‘Mine,’ she mimics him perfectly, then after a short silence where he’s wondering what’s going through her mind she says, ‘You found me. You named me.’

He cringes at that.

Laura continues. ‘I read a book about Native Americans believing that naming can help enrich a sense of identity. People’s names can change throughout their lives the same way people do. They believe nicknames provide insight into not just the individual but how other people perceive that person. People become a double prism, instead of a one-way mirror.’

Solomon drinks every word in.

She makes the sound of a car beeping, which confuses him, until he hears an aggressive car honk behind him. The traffic lights had turned green while he was lost in her words. He quickly drives on as they turn amber again, leaving the angry driver behind.

‘What I’m trying to say,’ she smiles, ‘is that I like it. I’m Lyrebird.’

‘Oh Solomon, she’s a beauty,’ Solomon’s mother, Marie, says breathily, greeting Solomon outside the house, as though he’s brought his first-born home from the hospital. She hugs her son, eyes on Laura the whole time. It’s almost as if she’s astonished, or her breath has been stolen. ‘My goodness, look at you!’ She takes Laura’s hands, no longer paying the slightest bit of notice to her son. ‘Aren’t you an angel? We’ll have to take good care of you.’ She pulls her close and wraps an arm around her shoulder.

Solomon carries the bags inside with his father, Finbar, who nudges his son so deeply in the ribs he drops the bag. Finbar laughs and hurries ahead of him.

‘Where are we going with these, petal?’ Finbar asks his wife.

‘The orchid room for dear Laura,’ she says.

‘That’s my room,’ a head peeks out from the doorway of a room to the right-hand side. ‘Hiya, bro.’ An identical but older version of Solomon, Donal, steps out and hugs his brother and greets Laura.

‘Hannah down the road will take you,’ she says. ‘If you weren’t on your own, Donal, we’d find somewhere else for you here, but that’s how it is now.’

‘Ouch,’ Solomon laughs, punching his brother in the arm. She’s punishing him for leaving the only woman everyone thought he’d marry.

Laura smiles, watching them with each other.

‘Is Solomon in the orchid room too?’ Donal asks innocently, and his mother throws him a look of pure evil that he sniggers at. Solomon busies himself with the bags and tries to usher Laura away from the conversation.

‘Solomon is in his own bedroom,’ Marie huffs, enjoying the teasing. ‘Now, off with the lot of you. Laura, angel, I’ll take you to your room. Don’t be starting anything with him in there, Donal,’ she warns them as they go into Solomon’s room.

Donal laughs. ‘Mam, I’m forty-two.’

‘I don’t care what age you are, you were always at poor Solomon. I know it was you who kicked him off the bunk bed.’

Donal’s grin gets wider. ‘Oh, the poor baby Solomon.’

‘I wasn’t the poor baby and you know it,’ Solomon says, distracted, trying to catch Laura’s eye to make sure she’s okay with all this, concerned that going from no contact with people, to this, in a matter of days, must be affecting her.