Cecelia Ahern - Lyrebird

Laura shakes her head and keeps walking to the door. She should go into the bathroom to clean herself up, but she knows she must leave, she doesn’t want Rory to wake up, she doesn’t want to have to deal with talking about what happened.

She has no idea where she is, or where her bags are. She’s in an apartment block somewhere. She heads for the fire escape and runs down five flights of stairs, thinking someone is chasing her, not hearing any footsteps but afraid to stop or look behind her in case they catch her. It’s like a bad dream being played out and she’s the one playing it out with an overactive imagination. She races downstairs, clinging to the rail, hand brushing the metal and feeling splinters from the chipped paint. She thinks she’ll be stuck on that staircase forever, that it will never end, until finally she reaches the ground floor. She passes a wall of grey postboxes, all numbers no address, not that it would mean anything to her anyway. She bursts out on to the street, hoping to see somewhere familiar, one of the places she’s been to with Solomon, Bo, or Rachel, but she doesn’t recognise it. Across from her is an identical building, beside and all around her is the same.

A loud horn frightens her and she looks up in time to see the city tram headed straight for her. She jumps onto the path, her heart pounding as the driver shouts as he passes.

When she has calmed herself somewhat, she looks left and right, decides to go left in the direction of the tram, it must be bringing people somewhere. Somewhere is better than the unknown, that same thought pattern she’s had since Bo and Solomon came into her life. Follow them, they’re going somewhere, somewhere is better than nowhere . While she walks she thinks of the sound of the tram that almost stopped her heart. She doesn’t hear herself mimicking it, though she hears its sound, like a song she can’t get out of her head. But people are startled, jumping away, some laughing when she nears.

Perhaps she’s not making a sound at all, perhaps it’s the sight of her that is so shocking to them and the smell of her. The vomit in her hair, the dried vomit on her boots that she sees now for the first time. She looks a disgrace, she smells even worse. She attempts to tie back her hair, make her appearance neater, especially when a camera phone comes out of a bag. It’s like a tidal effect, once one is out it gives others the permission, the confidence to do the same.

She feels the beat in her chest of last night’s music, the people shouting, the broken glass, the muffled sounds that blend together into one noisy, disturbing cacophony. She holds her hands to her ears, to block it all out. The people staring at her, the phones are held up, the flashbulbs of the photographers, now she remembers. The photographers. Oh God, people will see her in the newspaper. Would they print such awful pictures? She thinks of Solomon, opening his morning paper. If he sees her, she will never look him in the eye again, such is her embarrassment.

She hears the rustle of his morning paper while Bo clicks away on her phone, everything for her on a screen, everything for him to be touched. Rustle, click, tram warning, smash of a glass. An angry taxi man, shouting at her. A rough hand on her arm. She remembers now. She’d thrown up in the taxi, he’d thrown them out. She’d kneeled on the roadside and vomited some more. The lads laughing. Blue Converses standing beside her, splashing the white tip with vomit. More laughter. A hand on her head now and then, an arm around her waist. Not being able to stand, being taken away, a girl, the nice girl asking the owner of the arm around her waist what he thinks he’s doing. Rory telling the man with the hand around her waist to back off. What was he going to do to her? Her cheeks flame with the shame that she allowed herself to end up in that position.

Then the bathroom. The toilet bowl. The shit stain on the side. A warm blanket. A glass of water. Distant laughter and music.

She holds her hands over her ears, she sinks to the ground, trying to hide from the cameras. Her mum and Gaga were right to hide her, she’s not able for all of this, she can’t run anywhere. She wishes they’d hide her now.

As she thinks of them, the noises in her head start to calm. She can think more clearly, as the thoughts quieten she hears herself whimpering, crying, breathless, hiccups. She’s sitting on the ground. A crowd gathers around her. Some people too polite to look directly at her but still they hover nearby. She looks up at the person standing beside her. A garda. A female one. Mam and Gaga said not to trust them. But this garda seems kind. She looks worried. She bends down, gets to her level and smiles, concern in her eyes. ‘Want to come with me?’

She holds out her hand and Laura takes it. She has nowhere else to go. Somewhere is better than nowhere.

Laura sits in a corner of the room in the garda station, wrapped in a blanket. Between her hands she holds a mug of hot tea, which has helped to calm her. She waits for somebody to pick her up, she wouldn’t give Solomon or Bo’s name, she doesn’t want them to see her like this, or know anything about what has happened. Her pride has been bruised. She wanted to prove that she could be okay without them and she failed.

The gardai work around her; opening and closing the hatch to stamp passport forms, and driving licences and whatever else people need. Lots of paperwork; the behind-the-scenes of keeping the law. She feels like she is in a safe area, no nasty robbers being dragged into the cells. If her mum and Gaga knew about this they would be terrified, their worst fears realised, but there’s no sense of terror here, it’s calm. Laura thinks of Gaga and hears the sound of the carving knife being sharpened. Not an appropriate sound to make in a police station; heads turn. Maybe that’s why she does it, because she’s not supposed to. The nerves have gotten to her, or she wants to rebel, she wants to be different, to be seen? These are all the questions Bo asked her when they were alone. Laura thinks about it now, in a way that she never has before, she’s never had to analyse herself so much. She’s not sure why she makes the sounds she makes, not always anyway, sometimes it makes perfect sense. But now, making knife-sharpening sounds in a police station, that’s not smart. When she’s relaxed on the mountain that makes sense, reading a book and a robin is building a nest above her. She can’t help but join in with their sounds then.

‘A robin,’ the male garda says suddenly. ‘I recognise that one.’

‘Didn’t know you knew anything about birds, Derek.’

‘We have a family of them in our back garden.’ He spins around in his chair to talk to his colleague. ‘The daddy bird is vicious enough.’

‘They’re very territorial,’ Laura says, remembering.

‘That’s it,’ he says, dropping the pen to the table. ‘Those robins would win in a fight against our dog any day. Daisy is terrified of them.’

‘I’d say Daisy wouldn’t win in a fight against anyone,’ his colleague says, still rifling through papers. ‘With a name like Daisy.’

The others laugh.

As everybody relaxes, the sound of their laughter triggers something. She feels the beat of the music from the nightclub, in her heart.

Rude stupid bitch. The girl had thought Laura was blocking her ears to avoid a conversation with her, when it was because the sound of the hand-drier had given her a fright. It was all a misunderstanding.

Misophonia , Bo had explained to her one day. People with misophonia hate certain noises, termed trigger sounds, and respond with stress, anger, irritation and in extreme cases, violent rage. Laura hadn’t felt that it applied to her, but perhaps Bo was right? She thinks of the moment again.