Lyrebird

by Cecelia Ahern

  ‘Did the customers come into the house?’

  ‘No. The studio, there’ – she points at the garage – ‘was their workshop. They didn’t like people coming to the house.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They were private. They wanted to keep their business separate to the house.’

  ‘They didn’t want anybody to see you, did they?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why do you think that is?’

  ‘Because they were private.’

  ‘Do you mind putting the question in your ans—’

  ‘They didn’t want anybody to see me because they were private,’ Laura snaps a little. It comes out harsh, not something they could use. Too aggressive, too defensive.

  Bo leaves her to settle for a moment, pretending that she’s checking the sound with Solomon.

  ‘It’s perfect.’ He winks at Laura when Bo’s back is turned. Rachel eyes him.

  ‘I have two questions about that. One I’ll ask you now, one I’ll save for later. What do you think their desire for privacy meant to you at the time?’

  Laura ponders that. ‘I could see that they were happy with each other’s company. They talked and laughed all the time. They worked together, lived together, they’d stay up late, drinking and chatting, until the early hours. They always had something to do, a project, whether it was a dress, or a recipe. They liked planning, discussing, looking at a bigger picture. They were patient, they had long-term plans, so many going on at once because if they did that it meant that something was always happening, a project or an experiment was always coming to its end, like being given a gift. They would marinate beech leaves in vodka for months, they’d have bottles and bottles of it in the pantry,’ she laughs. ‘Then they’d have late nights drinking and dancing, singing and telling stories.’

  It reminds Solomon of his family, no different.

  ‘They didn’t need anyone else,’ she says softly, yet it doesn’t sound as though she felt left out, merely that she recognised it was a glorious thing. ‘They were enough company for each other. I think they had a kind of a love affair together. Just the two of them.’

  This reminds Solomon of the Toolin twins. Perhaps Isabel and Tom had more in common than anyone thought.

  ‘Would you sit up late into the night with them? Would you take part in these parties?’ Bo asks, her eyes shining, loving the picture Laura is painting.

  ‘Sometimes I would stay up late with them. Even when I wasn’t supposed to be there, I was listening. It’s not exactly a large house, as you can see, and they weren’t exactly quiet.’ She laughs, that beautiful musical laugh. She bites her lip and looks at Solomon.

  He looks up at her from the grass, beautiful big blue eyes that glint, a strand of hair comes loose and it falls across his eyes, over his long black eyelashes. He looks down at his equipment, moves a dial one way then back again.

  ‘Tell us some of the stories they told,’ Bo asks.

  ‘No,’ Laura says pleasantly. ‘That’s between them.’

  ‘But they’re not here now,’ Bo jokes, conspiratorially.

  ‘Yes they are.’ Laura closes her eyes and breathes in again.

  Solomon smiles. He looks down at Rachel and sees her beaming, teary-eyed. Bo gives Laura a moment before continuing.

  ‘You were home-schooled,’ Bo prompts.

  ‘Gaga was home-schooled too. Her dad thought it was a waste of time to have girls educated, so he’d forbidden her from going. Her mother taught her secretly at home. She did the same with me.’

  ‘Do you regret missing out on the school experience?’

  ‘No,’ she laughs. ‘I think a lot of people are missing out on the joys of home-schooling. I remember Gaga chasing a frog around the stream; she said that Mum’s school dissected them, to teach students how they looked when they were dead. She wanted to show me how it lived.’ She bites her bottom lip again and Solomon eyes that lip, before swallowing. ‘She was a sight, running around after it. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon. I still know the anatomy of a frog.’

  Bo laughs with her. Then. ‘Did you know at the time that you were a secret? That nobody knew you existed?’

  ‘Yes, I knew. I always knew that I was a secret. They didn’t trust people. They were wary. They said if we stuck together, we’d be okay.’

  ‘What do you think they were protecting you from?’

  ‘People.’

  ‘Did people hurt them?’

  Silence while Laura searches for a way to answer. ‘Gaga and Mum were different people on their own. When the customers arrived, I’d hear their voices, sometimes watch from the window, and I’d barely recognise them. They wouldn’t laugh, they were robotic and to the point. There was nothing magical about them. They weren’t funny like they were at home, singing and laughing. They were serious. Sombre. Like a guard went up. It wasn’t just because it was a business; they protected themselves. They were wary of people.’

  ‘Your mother dropped out of school when she was young. When she was fourteen. Do you know why?’

  Solomon studies Bo then. He’s positive that she knows something about it. He can see it in her. Her body has tightened, though she tries to appear relaxed, but she’s got that bit between her teeth. Bo hadn’t told Solomon anything about what she’d learned from the locals, he’d been tired when she returned, grumpy at having to leave Laura. He’d wanted to sleep immediately, while Bo was hyper, unable to relax, moving around the room, making noises that caused him to snap at her. He should have guessed at the time her behaviour was because she had learned something that would affect the documentary, but he was distracted. He is intrigued now, although his defences have gone up because Laura’s have. He doesn’t want Bo to keep digging, he feels ready to protect Laura, like he’s on the wrong side. The effect is dizzying, disorientating.

  Laura stiffens. ‘Granddad died. Gaga needed Mum to help her out with the business. Granddad had been a labourer on a farm. They needed more income. So Mum left school and Gaga home-schooled her. They expanded the dressmaking and alterations business. They made medicines too. Natural remedies, which they sold at markets. Mum said children at school called them witches.’

  ‘Did that hurt her?’

  ‘No. Gaga and Mum laughed about it. They’d cackle when they were making their potions,’ she smiles, remembering.

  ‘Children can be cruel,’ Bo says gently. ‘What other things did children say to your mum?’

  You don’t have to answer, Solomon feels like saying. Rachel is looking down now at her shoes, occasionally checking the monitor, a sign she feels uncomfortable.

  ‘Mum wasn’t like most other people,’ Laura says, thoughtfully, speaking slowly, choosing every word with great care. ‘Gaga made the big decisions. Mum was happy for Gaga to take the lead,’ she says, diplomatically. ‘Mum had her own way. If you ask me what some children used to say about her, then I’d say they called her slow. Mum told me that. But she wasn’t slow. It’s such a lazy word. She thought differently, had to learn things in another way, that’s all.’

  When Laura’s body language starts to close up, Bo changes tack.

  ‘How did you end up at the Toolin cottage?’

  ‘My mum got sick, very sick, in 2005. We never saw doctors, Gaga and Mum didn’t believe in their medicines, they preferred to make their own natural remedies and were rarely ill, but they knew that something was seriously wrong with Mum that their medicines wouldn’t heal so they went to a doctor who referred them to hospital. She had colon cancer. She refused all hospital treatments, she said she would rather go naturally, the way she’d arrived. So me and Gaga nursed her.’

  ‘How old were you?’ Bo asks gently.

  ‘I was fourteen when she was diagnosed, she died when I was fifteen.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Bo whispers and leaves a respectful silence.

  A bird flies overhead, a fly nearby. Laura mimics them both, showing her distress, as she attempts to gather hersel
f.

  ‘So then it was you and Gaga here at the house. Tell me about those days.’

  ‘It was difficult for Gaga, because she had to run the alterations business alone. I helped her but she was still training me, and there was only so much I could do. She was having problems with her fingers, arthritis, her fingers were bending inward and she couldn’t do it any more, certainly not as fast. There were less and less customers too. Mum’s housekeeping money had helped to that point, but that wasn’t something I could do.’

  ‘Even at fifteen you wouldn’t deal with customers? You couldn’t step out into the world then?’

  ‘How would Gaga explain me suddenly appearing?’ Laura asks. ‘She couldn’t. She would try and think of ways, but it would upset her. It would make her anxious, nervous. She didn’t want to lie. She worried about tying herself up in knots, forgetting her story. She was forgetting a lot of things by then. She felt that at fifteen I was still too vulnerable, I was still a child.’

  ‘Where did her fear come from, Laura?’

  Again that question, but this time Solomon feels it’s valid. Even he wants to know. But Laura has closed up. Bo doesn’t push.

  ‘Did you ever ask who your dad was?’

  Solomon studies her. Laura gazes down, her eyes gleaming green, as though reflecting the long grasses she is sitting among. He wants to run his finger down her cheek, her chin, her lips. He looks away.

  ‘No.’ And then, as if remembering Bo’s instructions, she starts again. ‘I never asked who my dad was,’ she says gently. ‘I never asked because it was never important. I knew that whoever he was it wouldn’t make a difference. I had all the people I needed here.’

  Rachel purses her lips, clearly moved.

  ‘What about when your mother passed away?’

  ‘I did wonder then, when Mum was gone, if I should have asked, because I felt like she was my only way of knowing. I suppose I can never know for sure, but I felt so strongly that Gaga wouldn’t have told me. Mum had the opportunity to tell me and decided not to, I knew Gaga would respect her word. It might not make sense, but I didn’t think about who he was very often. It wasn’t important.’

  She thinks for a moment.

  ‘I thought about him when I saw Gaga getting older, when I started thinking about being alone. She seemed to get old so quickly. Her and Mum were a team. They only needed each other in the world, which was beautiful, but they needed each other. They fed off each other. When Mum died, it’s like Gaga suddenly started to go too. And she knew it. That’s why she started worrying for me. Trying to plan. She wasn’t sleeping, I know it was playing on her mind all the time.’

  ‘Did they not make a plan for you before she died?’

  ‘I never asked.’ Laura swallows. ‘But Mum wasn’t ever the one to make plans. Gaga made them, Mum helped see them through. I felt that Mum would have approved what happened in the end. I know it sounds odd, like we didn’t communicate, but we did. We lived so close to each other, in one another’s pockets, we didn’t always talk about things, each of us knew how the other was feeling, we didn’t need to always ask.’ She looks at Bo, embarrassed, but trying to make her see.

  ‘I understand,’ Bo says, genuinely, though Solomon wonders if she does. Bo is a person who usually has to ask. ‘So when did you find out about Tom being your dad?’

  ‘When Gaga told me about her plan to move me to the cottage. She told me that Tom Toolin was my dad, that he had never known about me. She had met with him and he’d agreed I could live on his land. She told me that he had a twin brother who could never know. That was Tom’s only request.’

  ‘How did you feel about that?’ Bo asks, and it’s obvious from Bo’s tone that she’s disgusted on Laura’s behalf.

  ‘I was used to keeping a secret.’ She offers a soft smile, but her eyes reveal a sadness.

  Bo decides to manoeuvre away from the topic of Tom and her new life on the mountain. ‘You lived here for sixteen years before moving to the cottage, did you ever want to get out of the house? Away from here?’

  ‘We did, many times,’ Laura says, lighting up. ‘Before Mum got sick. We went on holidays to Dingle. I swam in Clogherhead, nearly drowned,’ she laughs. ‘We went to Donegal too. They both liked to fish. They’d catch the fish, gut them, cook them. Make fish oils.’

  ‘So you did get out?’ Bo asks, surprised.

  ‘They didn’t lock me in the house,’ Laura smiles, delighted by Bo’s surprise. ‘The opposite happened. They let me be free. I could be who I wanted, without anyone judging, or anyone telling me what to do. I don’t believe there were any sacrifices. There were appointments for the alterations, no drop-ins allowed, so we knew I could play wherever I liked until customers came. They came when I was inside doing my schoolwork.’

  ‘But you never did exams.’

  ‘Not state exams.’

  ‘Because the state didn’t recognise you.’

  ‘They didn’t know I’d been born,’ Laura says simply. ‘There’s a difference. Mum gave birth to me here in the house. She didn’t register my birth.’

  ‘Why do you think she kept you a secret? Away from the world?’

  Back to that question.

  ‘Mum didn’t keep me away from the world. I’ve been here all along, fully immersed in it,’ Laura says firmly.

  Bo takes a moment, slows it all down. ‘So, I asked you a two-part question earlier: when you were younger, why did you think your mum and Gaga kept you a secret. You answered, but I want to ask you the second part. Now, as a grown woman, with Gaga and Mum gone, what is your opinion of why they kept you a secret? Has it changed?’

  Laura doesn’t shut down immediately as she had before. It’s the way Bo has phrased it, she has pointed out that Laura is a grown woman, she’s not a child any more, her mother and grandmother aren’t here, she doesn’t need to keep defending them or answer for them. She can give her own opinions now.

  She growls, not at anyone in particular, just in general. A threatened kind of feeling. Then there’s the sound of smashing glass. A walkie-talkie sound, static radio. It’s unclear whether she notices she’s made these sounds.

  ‘At the time I felt they were happy, wary, but content. When I look back, I think they were scared.’

  Bo is practically holding her breath.

  ‘They were afraid that somebody would take me away from them. They were afraid they would be seen as unfit to care for a child. There were … rumours.’ The glass breaking, the same radio static. ‘People talked about them. They were witches, they were crazy. They let them make their dresses or alter their clothes but they didn’t invite them to their parties or their weddings. They were outsiders.’

  ‘Why was that?’ Bo asks gently.

  ‘Gaga said she never really fit in, from the moment she arrived. But she loved my granddad so she stayed, tried. But it got worse. The rumours got worse.’

  ‘When?’

  Laura thinks about it. ‘When my granddad died,’ she says, and she closes down.

  And then, almost as if Laura wants to keep talking or she’s tired of the questions that will inevitably come, she continues.

  ‘Gaga’s health suffered after Mum died. She didn’t want me to be left alone. She wanted me in a safe place, that’s what she kept saying. Sometimes she woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me and I knew she couldn’t get it out of her head.’ She pauses for a moment. ‘I read once that nest-building is driven by a biological urge in pregnant animals to protect their offspring, or themselves, from danger. Nests are designed to hide eggs from predators, to shield them. I believe that’s what Gaga and my mum did. The cottage she brought me to was her bird’s nest. Away from danger, and next to my dad. She did the best she could.’

  Silence.

  ‘Why did you stay at the cottage? You’re twenty-six years old now, Laura, you could have left a long time ago. At this adult age you wouldn’t have had to worry about being taken away.’

  Laura looks at Solomon. B
o registers this. Solomon’s eyes don’t leave Laura. He doesn’t care, to break her gaze would be rude, after they’ve listened to her story. Besides, his pull to her is magnetic, not normal.

  ‘I stayed there for the same reasons as my mum and Gaga did what they did. Because I was happy to stay. Because I was afraid to leave.’

  ‘You’re not afraid to leave now. Is it because Tom died? Is it because you’re ready for change?’ she asks question after question to help her along.

  ‘Change happens all the time, even on the mountain. You have to change with change,’ she says, her voice going deeper again, as she mimics Gaga. It’s the first time Bo and Rachel have heard it and their eyes widen as it seems another person takes over her body. ‘I was looking for what Gaga and Mum had with each other. Tom had it with Joe. You just need one person to trust.’

  She raises her eyes to Solomon, whose heart is pounding so hard he’s afraid his boom mic will pick it up.

  11

  On Saturday morning, the four sit together in the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Laura looks around, not exactly as a Martian would, but with the eyes of someone who hasn’t been around this kind of social situation before, if ever.

  ‘Good morning, are you ready to order breakfast?’ a waitress asks.

  She can’t pronounce her R’s, pronouncing them as a W sound instead.

  Laura studies her, fascinated, her lips moving to make a W sound.

  Solomon watches, hoping she won’t make the sound aloud.

  ‘Yes,’ Rachel says loudly, ready to eat the leg of the table. She fires off her order first.

  ‘So let me just read that back: two sausages, two eggs, two tomato, mushrooms, two rashers … the rashers are from Rafferty’s, local farmer. They’re excellent. Award-winning.’

  ‘Washers,’ Laura says suddenly, mimicking the waitress perfectly. She’s not even looking at her, she’s buttering her toast and speaking as though she doesn’t notice the words are coming from her mouth. ‘Weady … bweakfast.’