Cecelia Ahern - Lyrebird

‘There’s a man waiting for you at the bar,’ the receptionist informs her. ‘Mr Fallon.’

Her heart lifts. Solomon. She grins. ‘Thank you.’

She practically runs through the lobby to the bar, and slowly circles the bar searching for the black-haired Solomon, seeking out the high knot on his head that stands above everybody else. But he’s nowhere to be found. Confused, she heads back the way she came.

She feels hands on her waist. ‘Hey!’ a man says. ‘Remember me?’

Rory.

Laura makes the sound of a gunshot. A fallen hare. A whimpering dying animal.

‘Yeah.’ Rory looks down, scratches his head awkwardly. ‘I wanted to talk to you about that. I came here to apologise.’ He looks genuinely sorry, embarrassed even. ‘Can we talk? I know a good place.’

Rory and Laura sit opposite one another in Mulligans, a dark pub, as shut away from others as possible. They’re in the quietest corner they can find because as soon as Laura entered everybody stared. Everybody knew who she was, from young to old, and if they didn’t recognise her, they certainly knew her name and of her abilities. The first drink is on the house, as a welcome to Lyrebird. Rory orders a Guinness and Laura has a water. He doesn’t comment on her choice, he’s messed up so much with her that he’s keen not to make any more mistakes. He’d called Solomon to apologise for what had happened at the shooting range, which had taken him a lot to do, especially to Solomon. He asked to speak to Laura but Solomon was adamant that he couldn’t, too busy keeping her to himself, which angered Rory even more. His brother had a girlfriend already, yet was protecting this woman like he owned her. His brother was always like that. Private about things, he kept things to himself, never let Rory in. Things between them had always been stilted, awkward, there was no easy banter like there was with the others. Rory understood the others, who laughed at his humour and even if they didn’t laugh, they understood it. Solomon never did. He took offence easily, he always passed judgement on Rory.

Rory was embarrassed about the entire shooting range debacle. With hindsight, he could see it was an asshole stupid thing to do, but at the time he’d felt so compelled to get Laura to notice him that he hadn’t thought about the repercussions; about the danger, about the sheer psychotic way it would make him look. It was one thing messing up on his own, it was another to do it in front of his brothers and dad, not to mention in front of Laura.

Of course Solomon wouldn’t accept his apology, kicking him when he already felt down, and he knew that he wouldn’t pass his messages along to Laura. After he’d watched her audition on TV and the whole world was talking about her, he knew he had to come and see her himself. She wasn’t hard to find, any newspaper could tell you her whereabouts, and as soon as he saw she was staying in a Dublin hotel he knew getting to her there without Solomon around was his best chance.

He studies Laura now. She’s unusual, but the most beautiful kind of unusual. Exotic, in a Cork mountains way. He wonders what happened at the apartment, and what made her leave Solomon and Bo. But his brother’s loss was his gain, that’s the way it has always been.

First, an apology – not that he doesn’t really mean it; he intends to show how much he means it in the most genuine way possible. Big eyes, he knows the trick. Girls love that shit.

Laura’s head feels light as she sits in the pub with Rory. She’s had two glasses of white wine and she’s not used to its effects on her. She likes it, she could have more. She doesn’t feel so confused any more, that pounding headache that arrived in Galway after Rory’s gunshot, the one that throbbed right behind her eyes, is now gone. She doesn’t think it ever left her, just intensified in moments of stress. It’s fitting that her headache is gone, as Rory was the first to put it there and now he is the one to take it away. Or the wine is, but either way, he’s responsible. He’s funny, she hasn’t stopped laughing since he started talking. She genuinely believes that he’s sorry for what he did, even if he is heightening his apology more than she believes is true. He’s doing the flirty thing with his face that the photographer was doing, softening his eyes. It’s not real but they seem to believe it works, whatever it is. Not that he should be sorry at all for what he did. She’s not judge and jury, it was an incident that affected her deeply, but she doesn’t think she has a higher authority over anyone and tells him so.

He’s like his father. He tells long stories about mischievous nights out, stories of him and his brothers as teenagers. He seems to have spent more time stitching his brothers up than anything else, but he’s gleeful about it. She likes to hear these stories, particularly the ones about Solomon, about what he was like when he was younger. She tries to limit her questions after she senses him tensing when she asks too many, so she chooses to sit back and listen, waiting for the next mention with hope. When Rory says something about Solomon’s ex-girlfriends she tries not to sit up too much, or make her interest too obvious. What she learns is that the girls he dated were always edgy, weird; one girl he dated seriously for a few years went to art college and the family had attended her exhibition on feet. Hairy, yellow-nailed feet; then he laughs, and Laura isn’t sure whether it is true or not.

‘Why do you think he dated these girls?’ Laura asks, trying to sound disinterested.

‘Because Solomon is so uninteresting himself,’ he says, and there’s a hardness in his voice.

Being with Rory, bizarrely, makes her feel connected to Solomon. They’re alike, for a start. Rory’s hair is short and tight, and he’s shorter in height, his features are less defined, but he’s like a miniature version of Solomon. He’s mousier, more baby-faced, while Solomon is stronger, harder, has sharper edges, everything is more intense – his movement, his stance, especially his eyes. Rory’s posture is casual, his eyes rarely rest on hers, they’re always looking around. They sparkle, they have a glimmer, a playful shine that reveals his inner spark and his mischievous nature, but they don’t settle on anything for too long, nor does his concentration. That makes him an interesting person to be around. He talks while looking at something else, usually the thing he’s talking about, because most of what he says is about somebody who’s near them. He does funny voices, pretends to do the voices of the couple sitting nearby. He makes up their conversation until Laura’s stomach hurts so much from the laughter that she has to tell him to stop.

He’s a carpenter, and while she pictures him in a romantic setting carving furniture, just as his dad had for Marie on her birthday, he says it’s nothing like that.

‘Mostly it’s moving around building sites or businesses, doing exactly what they tell you to do, fulfilling a brief,’ he says, bored. ‘To be honest,’ he gives her big eyes and leans in as if sharing a secret, ‘I hate my job. The others don’t know. I couldn’t tell Dad, it would break his heart, I’m the only one who went into the same trade. All the others flew the coop. I’m the one that got left behind,’ he admits, with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

Laura feels he’s being honest, perhaps for the first time since they sat down. She feels she can identify with him in a way. Despite his confidence and his overflowing personality, he’s lost in there.

He finishes his fourth bottle of beer and she can tell he’s restless. She’s so comfortable here, particularly after the two glasses of wine, and she’d gladly stay but he’s fidgeting in his chair, which makes it hard for her to relax.