Cecelia Ahern - Lyrebird

The girls laughing in the toilet, camera phones held up. The man with his hand around her waist, bringing her somewhere, saying ssh in her ear. The kind girl whispering ssh in her ear, holding her hair, rubbing her back.

No, Laura stops. She hadn’t reacted violently, she had merely blocked her ears.

Hypersensitive to sounds , Bo had said to her another time.

The garda with the family of robins in his garden rolls over to her on his chair on wheels, he looks at her with a concerned fatherly face. ‘If there’s anything you need to share about last night, you can tell us.’

She swallows. She shudders, then shakes her head.

A garda she hasn’t seen before arrives to start his shift and drops a tabloid newspaper down on the desk. Laura sees a photograph of herself on the front page. The headline reads DRUNK BIRD. She starts to panic. He’s startled, had no idea the Lyrebird is in his station. The kind guard who found her covers up the newspaper and tries to calm her again.

Laura can barely hear her words through her own panicked sounds; the airplane, Mossie’s snarl, the bats at night, city sirens, camera shutter, the sound of the lyrebird’s cage, the airplane seatbelt clicking, toilets flushing, high heels on tiles, the noisy hand-driers. Everything meshes in her head.

Despite the kindness from the gardai she should have known it wouldn’t stay so peaceful for long. Somehow the press discover she’s at the station. They’re outside and waiting for her to appear. Bianca and Michael arrive. Michael stays outside, clearing a route for Laura to the blacked-out SUV. Laura didn’t want to contact Solomon and Bo, Bianca had been the only person she could think of.

‘Are you okay?’ Bianca asks with concern as Laura is brought out to reception.

Laura whimpers, Mossie’s dying sounds, the fallen hare.

‘She’s had a rough night,’ the kind garda says. ‘She needs a rest.’

‘Is the girl pressing charges, is she in trouble?’ Bianca asks.

‘We haven’t had anybody here pressing charges,’ the garda says.

Bianca turns to Laura. ‘There was a girl in the toilets of the nightclub, she says you pushed her, assaulted her. Curtis needs to know. They have to release a statement to the press.’

Laura swallows nervously trying to think. ‘I didn’t push anyone. I felt dizzy, I was trying to lean on her. I needed help, I was… am I in trouble?’

‘No,’ the garda says, annoyed. ‘Nobody has pressed any charges. You should believe us over the newspapers. You’re going to take her somewhere safe, I hope?’

Laura makes sounds. She’s nervous, flustered, trying to relive everything that happened so she can understand it.

Bianca eyes her cautiously. She’s heard Laura’s sounds before but nothing as distressed as this. They spill from her like the shaky breath and hiccups after a long cry. ‘Are you okay, Laura?’ she asks gently.

‘It’s our understanding that these sounds are normal for her?’

‘Yes, but…’ Bianca looks really concerned.

‘I’m fine,’ Laura says. ‘I just want to go…’ she almost said home. Home. She doesn’t know where that is any more. Exhaustion sweeps over her.

‘Okay, we’ll get you somewhere comfortable and safe, don’t worry. There are loads of photographers outside,’ she adds, looking at Laura’s appearance nervously. ‘Here, you can wear these -’ She hands her her large sunglasses. Laura puts them on and immediately feels shielded from the world. ‘And wear this -’ She takes off her fur gilet and hands it to Laura. Laura hesitates. This is a new Bianca.

‘It’s not real fur,’ she says, as if that’s the problem.

Laura finally puts it on, agreeing that, while it may not be the best look over a tartan shirt that was an oversized man’s shirt that Tom gave to her, and which she accessorised with a belt, it does cover the stains. She thanks the guards and faces the barrage of more photographers and a TV camera. At first she thinks it’s Rachel behind the camera, and naturally expects to see Solomon standing by her side, feeling hopeful to see the intense look of concentration on his face as he listens to the sounds around him, but he’s nowhere to be found and she realises it’s a news station, the correspondent barking questions at her with an oversized mic thrust in her face. Bianca and Mickey walk her so fast it’s all a blur around her. In the photos afterwards she looks like a different person. Her hair has been tied in a high topknot to hide the dried vomit, the fur gilet over the tartan shirt, the oversized sunglasses, the scuffed Doc Martens she’s had since she was sixteen and the walking socks pulled up. She hits the fashion magazines as a new style icon. Fur and tartan, Doc Martens and woollen socks. Everybody loves the quirky Lyrebird look. She doesn’t recognise herself when she sees the magazines. As the jeep drives off, Bianca throws a newspaper on to the seat beside Laura.

‘This is the only one that made it to print on time. There’ll be more stories tomorrow apparently.’

‘She doesn’t need to see that,’ Michael says, protectively.

‘Curtis told me to show her,’ she says. Michael sets his mouth to a firm straight line. Laura looks down at the paper on the seat beside her.

DRUNK BIRD

LYREBIRD GOES CUCKOO

NIGHT OWL IS BIRD BRAINED AFTER NIGHT OF HEAVY DRINKING

Her heart pounds, she feels sick. She lowers the window for air, wondering why they are so angry with her. She feels the waves emanating from the pages of the paper and it terrifies her.

Bianca twists around in the front seat, Mickey studies Laura in the rear-view mirror. Bianca reaches back and grabs the newspapers, stuffs them on the floor in front of her. But even though Bianca took the papers away, Laura has seen enough to remember for ever. Horrendous images of herself, being propped up by Rory, who’s laughing while her hair flies across her face. Her face, her legs, her feet are at all angles, out of joint, some photos of her with her eyes half-closed make her look drugged. Her eyes are dead, her pupils so dilated they almost take over the green. In some she’s sprawled in a dirty alley, lying on ground that’s wet from spilled alcohol or who knows what. Her face is bright white from the force of the flash. She doesn’t look drunk and scared, she sees what they’re talking about, she’s a liar because she’s not an innocent girl who doesn’t drink and is connected to the earth in ways that nobody else is, as they were saying before. She looks out of control, she looks like she’s on drugs, she looks like someone she wouldn’t want to know. The papers are angry, they feel duped.

Maybe she is. Maybe they’re right.

She takes the papers from Bianca. The worst tabloid of all procured photos from the girl at the party where Lyrebird crashed out. It doesn’t read as if she’s being sick, as if she’s scared, and wanted to go home. It looks as though she has injected herself with heroin. She can’t close the pages, she can’t stop looking at herself. She can’t find herself in them. She can’t reconcile the pictures with how she recalls feeling: afraid, confused, scared. But the look on this girl’s face is smug, high, cocky.

‘We’re bringing you to the contestants’ house for the final. We’ve checked you out of the hotel, there’s too many press there. StarrGaze will put the semi-finalists up until after the show. So far it’s just you. It will protect you from the press and it should protect you from them talking to the press, which some of them have done already.’ She turns around. ‘Watch out for Alice. She’s a weapon. Her semi-final is tomorrow night, but their votes have been high and they’re expected to go through.’