Cecelia Ahern - Lyrebird

‘Solomon told me that when his mother heard you mimicking the harp music at her birthday party, she said it was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. She has been making that sound for fifty years, but she heard it for the first time through you. Do you understand how important that is? When you met Caroline in wardrobe, it took you one minute to bring her to tears; you made her feel like she was six years old again, sitting with her mother in her workshop. I don’t think you have any idea of the way you touch people. You find the beauty in the world, the sadness in the everyday, the extraordinary in the ordinary, the whimsical in the mundane. Laura, you got into the show through mimicking a coffee machine for an entire minute.’

They laugh.

‘You are important. You are relevant. You are unique – and you deserve to be up on that stage just as much as anyone else. So what if you don’t have to rehearse – that doesn’t mean you’re not good enough. Should we all have to struggle to be truly great? Because it comes easily to you, does that make you any less talented? Or does that make you even more astounding? It’s the greatest lesson that you can teach us: what you have comes from within. It’s a natural, rare, God-given skill.’

‘It’s gone,’ Laura whispers.

‘It’s still in there. It’s like the hiccups. You got a fright and they went away, but they’re in there. You’ll find it again.’

‘How?’

‘Maybe if you remember how it began, that might help bring it back. You stopped feeling curious, or intrigued, you fell out of love with things. You’ll be inspired again.’ She glances at Solomon, almost as if she’s handing the baton over to him. Does she really mean what Solomon thinks she means? The awkward look in her eye, the sad but resigned tone. She stands up. ‘You have until tomorrow night. I’ve been helping Jack today, trying to figure out a set-up that will help you perform, that will help you feel comfortable. No more dancers in spandex, no more dancing bears in the woods. You’re going to feel right at home up there. Well… I better leave you guys…’ She looks around awkwardly, gathering her things under Solomon’s watchful gaze. He wants to say something but doesn’t know what. He’s not sure if he understands correctly. She disappears into the bedroom and he hears her unzip a case. His heart pounds.

He looks at Laura, wondering if she understands the greatness of what’s happening, but she’s in her own world, her mind mulling over all the things Bo said.

Solomon makes his way to the bedroom. He finds Bo packing her things.

‘Bo-’

‘Bo-’

Solomon and Laura speak at the same time.

‘Yes?’ she answers Laura, going to the door.

‘You said if I could remember where it came from in the first place…?’

‘Yes, it was just an idea…’

‘Have you got your camera here?’

Bo’s cheeks pink. ‘That’s not what I meant. I wasn’t asking you to…’

‘I know you weren’t. But I want to tell you.’

‘Laura we’re not allowed to continue with the documentary. StarrGaze Entertainment lawyers have been very clear on that point.’

‘I don’t care what they say, this is my mouth, my words, my thoughts, they don’t own them.’

Solomon and Bo look at each other. He gives her the nod.

Rachel is with Susie at the hospital, Susie is in labour. But Laura wants to do this now so Bo sets up a camera on a tripod. Solomon takes care of the sound. It’s done quickly without fuss. Laura is ready to talk.

Isabel got sick very fast. She weakened quickly. She’d been taking all of their home-made medicines, everything they could research and make for themselves. At no point did she want to take hospital drugs. She was against chemotherapy, she wanted to try alternative therapies, specific nutrition plans. She was very thorough in her research, Gaga too. They had always been like that, almost like everything they’d learned in their lives was all for that moment. She did liver-flush therapy, high pH therapy, which ensured she ate foods high in alkaline and balanced her body pH. And then when she couldn’t eat whole foods any more she was on a liquid protocol.

‘If I’m going to die,’ her mother reaches out and wipes a tear from her daughter’s cheek. ‘I’m going to die healthy.’

Laura smiles and sniffs her tears away. She kisses the back of her mother’s hand.

The work studio is in the house so that Gaga and Laura can work on the clothes alterations and care for her at the same time, though Gaga still deals with the customers in the garage. Their home is private. Protection of Laura has always been their main priority though now Gaga struggles with leaving her ill daughter. Laura often thinks that even though she is by her mother’s side, Gaga wants to be there herself. She is letting the business go, letting standards drop, just so that she won’t have to leave her. Her mother’s health has deteriorated fast, they sit up with her all night, supposed to be taking their shifts in turns but neither of them wanting to be asleep when the moment comes. It is on one of those days that Gaga is dealing with a customer in the garage, that Laura is alone with her mum. Laura can tell by the change in her mother’s breathing that something is happening.

‘Mummy,’ Isabel says, in a raspy voice, sounding like a child.

It is the first word she has said in days.

‘I’m here, Mum, it’s Laura,’ Laura takes her hand and holds it to her lips.

‘Mummy,’ she repeats. Her eyes are open, they look around as if searching for Gaga.

Laura’s heart pounds. She hurries to the window and peeks through the blinds toward the garage. There’s no sign of Gaga, the customer’s car is still in the drive. She looks back from her mother to the garage, feeling trapped, the most trapped she’s ever felt in her life. If she calls Gaga, the customer will hear or see her. They’d all made a pact that Laura would never be seen, not until she’s the legal age. It was long understood and long unspoken. The idea of her being out in the world before she’s sixteen terrifies them.

Laura is torn. Her mother’s breathing is shallow, she knows she’s leaving the world, she can’t call Gaga and risk anybody discovering her existence, but she can’t let her mum go thinking that she’s on her own.

The panic. The hot feeling that overwhelms her body, as sweat breaks out on her brow and trickles down her back. The palpitations. The cold fear. She is losing her mum and while she wants to shout to the world for help, she knows she can’t risk being taken away from Gaga too. She would lose everything.

She doesn’t want her mum to die thinking she is alone, just as she will feel without hers. She doesn’t want Gaga to know that her daughter died without her thinking she was there. She sits beside her, closes her eyes and wills every single part of her to solve the problem, to save her in the moment.

She opens her mouth and sings, and when she sings, she hears Gaga’s voice, the voice of an older woman with a Yorkshire accent. Isabel squeezes her hand.

The broken tree, with a broken limb,

Stands where the grass is brown, and the sky is dim.

Flowers are forever buds,

A skeleton tree in the luscious woods.

No spiders crawl, no animals reign,

On the broken tree, with a broken limb.

But on the branch a She Bird props,