Cecelia Ahern - Lyrebird

‘Look, Lyrebird, don’t worry about tonight, it’s part of the show. Everyone has their ups and downs. It’s good for you to have a journey, to show that you, like them, have a struggle. But the audience chose to save you. Look at poor Rose and Tony, their act was a disaster. She fell on her face, dressed as a hotdog.’ He starts laughing, a smoker’s chesty laugh. ‘Did you see the ketchup…?’ He stops laughing when she doesn’t join in.

‘Tonight’s performance was written for me by your show while I was in Australia,’ Laura says to him, confused. ‘I was told to learn it on the flight. I had one day to learn the dance.’

He sighs. ‘Rehearsal time was short, I understand, but believe me, the Australian trip was the chance of a lifetime. We debated it, but felt it was the best thing to do, and we needed you on the first semi-final show on the back of the Cory Cooke Show and before public interest waned. That trip was the trip of a lifetime, and any of the others would have chosen going there over a longer rehearsal.’

‘The others won’t even look at me.’

‘They’re jealous. Lyrebird, you’re going to win this show and everyone knows it.’

Her mouth drops open. ‘Jack, you said I was awkward. You said it was awful. You said I can’t dance. You were embarrassed for me – cringing, in fact…’

‘That was true,’ he laughs. ‘It was fucking awful.’ He laughs alone. ‘Oh, come on. Lighten up.’

‘I didn’t want to do that routine. I told you I wasn’t a dancer. I told you it wasn’t me. We sat right here, I told you I didn’t like the script. You told me to do it.’

‘Lyrebird.’

‘My name is Laura!’ She bangs her hand down on the table.

‘Don’t forget yourself, young lady,’ Curtis warns. ‘Don’t get too big for your boots.’

‘It’s okay,’ Jack says tiredly. ‘It’s just a show, that’s what we do. I was the big bad judge who talked bad about the nation’s sweetheart. You heard how the audience reacted, tomorrow they’ll all be talking about it and they’ll love you even more. Trust me, that’s the way it goes. Do you know how many votes our winner received last year? Sixty-five thousand. Do you know how many votes you received tonight to get through to the final?’

She shakes her head and hates herself for wanting to know.

‘Three hundred and thirty thousand.’

She looks at them both in surprise, but not for the reason they expect. She’s honoured, flattered, flabbergasted by the figures, but there’s something else that stuns her.

‘This is all a game to you,’ she says, her voice soft.

Perhaps it’s the softness that gets Jack the most. It gives him nothing to feel righteous or indignant over. She’s not angry, she barely had time to register the fact before she said it. Her bubble burst. He saw it happen. He just looks at her, frozen.

‘Okay, let’s wrap this up,’ Curtis says, standing up from propping against a table, as usual on the edges of the room. ‘You can leave now,’ he dismisses her, turning his back on her.

‘There’s one more thing,’ Laura says, feeling hollow. ‘It’s about Bo. She’s feeling cut out. I know I signed a contract with you, but I also had an agreement with her. Before you. She brought me to you and I have an obligation with her to fulfil. I’m not comfortable not doing as I promised.’

It could be just the jet lag, but she doesn’t think so, she’s almost certain she’s thinking clearly. Things in her life are certainly tilted at the moment, something, lots of things, feel off and it’s spreading. The Australian trip made her look at things differently, the show tonight reminded of what she had tried to push out of her mind but this meeting has cemented her view. Something is wrong here. Whatever happened between her and Bo, and Solomon, before her trip to Australia, she knows that one step towards straightening everything out would be to resume filming the documentary.

‘The issue with Mouth to Mouth productions is not for you to discuss,’ Curtis says. ‘It’s a contractual issue that’s currently with our lawyers.’

‘Lawyers?’ Laura looks at Jack. ‘But this could be all so much simpler than that. Just talk to Bo.’ She feels the panic welling up inside her. She thought she was walking toward freedom but instead she stranded herself on an island.

‘I need a moment alone with Jack now. You can leave,’ Curtis says, moving so that he’s beside Jack’s desk, leaning over, almost like he’s having a word in Jack’s ear, as though he owns that ear.

Laura watches him, in shock, her heart pounding, wanting to interrupt, to make one more attempt with Jack.

He speaks as if she’s not in the room. ‘Alan Murphy wants to talk to you about not being able to do gigs while the show is on the air. He says he can’t earn any money. It’s in the contract, he signed it, I told him that, he can’t have his cake and eat it, I need you to know what’s going on in case he brings it up with you.’

‘Jesus, this is the biggest platform in the world right now and he’s complaining?’ Jack asks, irritated, throwing the scrunched up baby wipe down on the desk.

Laura slowly stands and makes her way to the door, but before she leaves, she directs her words at Jack. ‘It’s Alan’s niece’s Holy Communion. His brother asked him to perform, the show won’t let him do it. He’s not being paid.’

Jack looks at Curtis. ‘That true?’

‘Well, I don’t know the specifics. A gig’s a gig.’

Jack looks at Laura, he considers her. ‘Find out what it is exactly. If it’s his niece’s Holy Communion party then for fuck sake let him do it, Curtis.’

Laura nods her thanks, recognition of his humanity, and opens the door, feeling Curtis’ eyes searing into her back.

Jack’s not finished with her. ‘Don’t worry Lyrebird, I’ll have a word with Bo. We’ll sort this out. It’s gone on long enough and you’re right: if it stays with the lawyers, it will never be resolved.’

The relief she feels practically lifts her off her feet and carries her down the corridor, past greedy eyes, past raised camera phones, then past the powerful flashes that dare to invade the blacked-out windows of the SUV and threaten to penetrate to her soul.

She shudders, hoping it’s their own reflections they capture.

After not being able to keep her eyes open all day, now Laura is wide awake. As Michael drives her to the hotel, she’s dreading another night alone in a hotel room, wide awake, suffering from jet lag, feeling a loneliness that aches. When Solomon had visited her here the final time they’d seen each other, he’d held her hand and told her to contact him if she needed him. She needs him now, she has always needed him, but she couldn’t bring herself to pick up the phone and throw his life out of balance again. She can’t deny that in trying to right a wrong between her and Bo, she has also knowingly taken steps to seeing him again. She parted with them on the promise that she wouldn’t get between them, as she was so obviously destroying them. She can’t deny her selfishness in longing to see him, and her weakness in sending Jack into the ring to do her dirty work for her. The more time she is spending around people, the more she discovers of her own character failures. In the cottage she was generous, she was kind, she was positive. In this world new sides of her are emerging and she doesn’t like it. She thought she was a better person than this.

She makes her way through the photographers who snap her as she returns to the hotel, and she stops to sign photographs of herself for the fans who are there night and day, and praise her shambolic performance. She collects her key from the desk.