Lyrebird

  ‘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.

  28

  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.

  ‘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 s
o 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.

  ‘Rory I’m sorry I can’t buy you a drink, I haven’t got a cent to my name.’

  He looks surprised.

  ‘I can’t even get on a bus, even if I did have somewhere to go. I have nothing,’ she says and realises as she says it how much this terrifies her. ‘At least at the cottage I could live off the land, I could forage, I grew my own fruit and vegetables, I had a cupboard filled with preserved foods, pickled foods, dried fruits, enough to get me through the winter when the options were small. I could survive without Tom’s supplies if I had to, but here, in the city, I can do nothing for myself.’ The irony of being surrounded by everything you could ever dream of and wish for and none of it attainable.

  Rory’s eyes suddenly light up.

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong, my dear Lyrebird. You are the most famous person in the world right now.’ And though she tries to laugh this off as ridiculous, he is adamant. ‘I’m going to show you how to forage city-style.’

  Foraging in the city includes going into an exclusive club with a twenty-euro entrance fee and not having to pay anything at all because Rory presented Lyrebird to the security guards as if she was a ticket herself. Foraging in the club was finding the right people to talk to who would buy them drinks, and welcome them to their table.

  At midnight, when Laura feels herself stumble when talking to a man who reaches out and grabs her arm and continues talking as if nothing happened, with his arm still on her, she snaps out of her bubble of contentment. Excusing herself and freeing herself from his grip, the ground swirls as she makes her way to the toilet. As she goes, everything seems to get louder, the thumping music is in her head, in her chest, bodies bump her, seem closer together than they were. She’s aware of the lack of space when before she felt fine. Once inside the toilets, the music fades and becomes a mere thud in her chest. Her ears are blocked, like they felt on the plane, and need to pop. There is a long queue ahead of her. Things feel very far away, yet she is here. She feels like she is behind herself. Everything moves quickly, her eyes registering everything they fall upon. Girl’s shoe, cut ankle, smudged tan, wet floor, sink, soggy tissues. The hand-drier fires up beside her and she jumps, startled, she holds her hands to her ears and looks down. At her own boots. Drink stains on her boots, splashes of beer and wine and who knows what. She closes her eyes. The hand-drier stops and she removes her hands and looks up. The girl in front of her is looking at her, she recognises her. Laura wonders if she should say something. The girl says something but the hand-drier fires up and Laura blocks her ears again.

  ‘Rude stupid bitch,’ she reads the girl’s lips.

  There’s a constant stream of toilet doors unlocking and opening, clickety-clack of high heels wobbling on tiles, doors banging. E
veryone’s looking at her now. All eyes, wide eyes. The ground is swirling, Laura needs to reach out to hold something or she’ll fall. She decides against the girl in front of her with the mahogany skin and the big boobs in the belly-exposing top. Turquoise belly-button piercing. Lip liner but no lipstick. She looks out for something to lean on, the sinks, but there’s a line of girls fixing their make-up, with their phones in their hands, pointing at her. Flashes blind her. No one will help her, she’s not sure if she’s calling for help. Perhaps she should. They’re viewing her through their screens as though she’s not real, as though she’s not flesh and blood right there in front of them. They’re looking at her as if she’s on the television.

  At the cottage, at home with her mam and Gaga, Laura used to look at people on television, or in books, newspapers and magazines. Sometimes she wanted to really see people, really touch them. In this world, people have that luxury and all they want is to see each other through screens.

  She hears the clicking of the doors locking, the bangs, toilets flushing, the clickety-clack of high heels. The girls around her start laughing, throwing their heads back, loud, dirty laughs. Perhaps those sounds were from Laura’s mouth. She’s not sure, she’s so dizzy. She’s here but she doesn’t feel like she’s here. She holds a hand to her foggy head. She needs help, she reaches out to the mahogany girl, sees a snake tattoo on her wrist, black and spiralling up the girl’s arm. Laura hisses in acknowledgement of it, and falls into her, but she pushes her away. Some girls jump in and shout ‘Fight!’

  Laura’s confused, she doesn’t want to fight, she just doesn’t want to fall.

  Then all of a sudden, she’s in someone’s arms, the person is pulling her away roughly. She doesn’t want to fight, all the girls are laughing, phones up in the air, taking photos or filming. She’s taken from the bathroom and down a corridor, she realises it’s a man she doesn’t know who’s dragging her and she panics. Starts to fight him. Why would the girls laugh at this, why wouldn’t they protect her? Defend her?