Cecelia Ahern - Lyrebird

‘Me understand joke,’ she says in a Tarzan accent. ‘Lyrebird see TV. Lyrebird read books.’

He chuckles. ‘Okay. Got it.’

People appear in the corridor from secret rooms, glance down at her, whispering, ‘That’s her,’ then disappear again. Others make obvious detours to walk past her, checking her out with sidelong looks before realising that at the end of the corridor is a dead end, and then are forced to walk by her again.

‘So, any news? Quiet week?’ he jokes. She laughs.

He’s missed her so much. Being away from her has felt like a torture, but a necessary one. Ever since he heard her imitate his laugh that night in bed, he knew he’d have to go away. He owed it to Bo. He owed it to Laura. Going away was the only way he could escape Laura’s sounds at night. Listening to them felt like being invited into her heart, reading her diary, and he had no place being there – all the more so because he wanted to be there. The fascination that the world is experiencing with her now is exactly what Solomon had experienced in the woods that first day he met her. But he has a nervous feeling that, in the brief time since he left last Monday, so much has shifted. Nobody could have foreseen this level of attention, but StarrGaze should at least be able to handle it. He’s wondering now who’s handling it.

‘How are you feeling about all of this?’ Solomon asks as somebody sneakily grabs a photo of Laura, pretending they’re texting, the phone aimed right in her direction. ‘It’s been a crazy week. We haven’t had a chance to speak.’

‘No. We haven’t.’ She mimics his awkward throat-clear and his chin-stubble scratch.

His week away hadn’t achieved the hoped-for goal of helping him to forget her. At the very moment Solomon was trying to get away from her, get her out of his head, the universe started conspiring against him. All week she’d been the topic of every conversation: ‘Did you see that girl?’ Even Paul, star of Grotesque Bodies , the show he was in Switzerland for, had asked Solomon about her in the waiting room one day, off camera.

At first Solomon hadn’t wanted to talk about her, but he soon discovered that pretending he had no idea who she was only led the other person to start telling him all about her, how she looked, how she wasted time before eventually blowing everyone away. So he’d changed his response, admitting that he had seen her, hoping that would end the conversation, but instead he found himself having to listen to conjectures about whether she had a recorder hidden away – and how she managed it when there was no hiding anything in that dress, huhuhuh.

Thankfully, nobody, fans or press, has yet figured out where Laura is living. When not at the studio meeting fans and being photographed, filmed, or being fitted for the next performance costume, Laura has been closeted away in the apartment. She has been photographed buying flowers on Grafton Street – a set-up photo op – and walking in Stephen’s Green. In particular, feeding the ducks. Lyrebird Feeds the Birds . She’ll be getting more than tuppence by the time she’s finished on the show, one clever tabloid journalist pointed out. Lyrebird’s earnings from potential reality shows, magazine shoots, interviews and performances has been totted up. If they knew how she really spent her days – sitting in the apartment with the TV off, or on the balcony watching the water, mimicking the bird in the cage on the balcony next door – he doesn’t know whether they’d be fascinated or bored by her. She would have loved to pass the time by cooking, but unfortunately Bo isn’t an eater, which makes the tension even heavier between them.

‘I’m okay,’ Laura replies. She makes a smacking sound, chewing gum in her mouth.

Solomon knows immediately she’s referring to Jack. ‘What about him?’ he asks.

It’s a relief to be with someone who gets what she means. Bo still doesn’t understand most of what she is saying. She doesn’t understand the connections. She thinks Laura is like a broken machine spurting out random sounds, she doesn’t get the underlying links. Neither does Jack, or Bianca, or just about anyone else, with the exception of Rachel, but most of all Solomon. It’s not complicated at all to Solomon, though Bo makes out he and Laura are speaking a secret language. It’s no secret; he pays attention, that’s all.

‘Jack doesn’t like you,’ she tells him.

‘Shocking, isn’t it?’

She doesn’t laugh. Her heart feels heavy. She knew that making this decision to join the show was hers to make, but the only reason she’d gone along with it was because she thought it would keep her with him. Instead, it has somehow led to him slipping away. She hasn’t seen him all week, and he has felt so far away. Not one phone call.

She plaits the suede fringing at the hem of her dress, undoes it and starts again.

‘You should be in there with them,’ Solomon says. ‘Bo and Jack are talking about you, planning things for you.’

‘I’d rather be here,’ she says bluntly. Then she changes the subject, hoping to lighten the mood. ‘What were you filming this week?’ She’s trying to pretend that she’s not angry with him for leaving her, pretend that she’s not angry with herself for being angry with him. Bo is his girlfriend. Bo is. Not her. Bo is everything Laura is not, could never be, would never want to be.

‘We were filming a man with ten-stone testicles.’

Her eyes widen and she starts laughing.

‘I know it’s funny, but it’s sad. He could barely walk, those things swelled up and wouldn’t stop. He didn’t have a life – not until the operation this week. It will take a while but eventually he’ll be able to walk, get a job, get trousers that fit him. Same as the woman with three breasts.’

‘I think that’s the show I should have been on.’

‘There’s nothing grotesque about your body,’ he says, and though he tries to stop it, he feels his face burn. He leans his head against the wall, closes his eyes and wishes his face would cool down. ‘I mean, there’s nothing grotesque about any of their bodies. It’s a stupid name. They’re just different.’

‘Hmm. I’m weird, though.’

‘Laura…’ He looks at her but she won’t meet his gaze. She’s busy concentrating on the strings in her hands. ‘You’re not weird,’ he says firmly.

‘I read it in the papers. “Lyrebird is mysterious, supernatural, unearthly, strange.” “Lyrebird’s freakish ability…” They’re all saying I’m weird.’

‘Laura,’ he says, so firmly he sounds angry.

She looks up at him in surprise. She stops twisting the strings around one another.

‘Don’t read that shit, you hear me?’

‘Bo tells me I should read it.’

‘ Never read that shit. And if you do, never believe it. Not the good, not the bad. You are not weird.’

‘Okay.’

He seems so angry, she remains silent for a moment, not knowing what to say. She can’t help but observe how his neck has gotten wider, how his eyes darken and his eyebrows furrow, his forehead in an angry crease. His voice has deepened, there’s a rough edge to it. He leans his head against the wall and looks up at the light, breathing in slowly, his nostrils flaring, his Adam’s apple seeming larger than usual; perhaps it’s the anger, perhaps it’s the angle. Even his anger has sounds.

He looks at her suddenly.

‘What?’

‘Is that what I sound like?’ he asks.

Laura isn’t sure what sound she made, but she assumes so.

‘I sound like a horse breathing after a race.’

She shrugs. There’s something on her mind.

‘Bo and I went to the theatre across from the apartment.’

He looks at her, surprised, he had no idea. ‘That’s good.’