Page 47 of Lyrebird

Six: A bacon bap with tomato ketchup.

Seven: The smell of freshly cut grass.

Eight: Scarface and a pint.

Nine: Jackie’s Army in Italia ’90.

Ten: Finding money in my pocket.

These are ten things that make me happy, oooh …

He stops playing and the crowd responds with:

And none of them are you.

‘SARAH!’ Donal yells, which sends everyone into hysterics.

Eleven: A favourite song on repeat.

Twelve: Catching the morning bus.

Thirteen: Popping bubble-wrap.

Fourteen: Mam’s apple tart. [This gets a cheer.]

Fifteen: Matching socks.

These are fifteen things that make me happy, oooh …

AND NONE OF THEM ARE YOU.

Sixteen: Packie Bonner’s save against Romania. [More cheers.]

Seventeen: Breakfast in bed.

Eighteen: A shower, shit and a shave.

Nineteen: The first day of the holidays.

Twenty …

He strums the guitar speedily, drumming up the anticipation, so that everyone joins in on the final line:

… And kissing your best friend!

The lyrics had always been ‘fucking’ your best friend, which is what he had done to help himself at the time, but it didn’t work of course, and he kept it clean for his parents’ sake.

The crowd erupt with joy and as he leaves the stage, Cormac, his eldest brother, gets up to say a piece from Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel.

As Solomon makes his way through the crowd, stopping to chat to people he hasn’t seen in months, he reaches his place to find Laura gone. He searches around and catches Donal’s eye. He points at the door towards the kitchen. Solomon can’t get into the kitchen quick enough.

The kitchen holds party stragglers picking at the food during Cormac’s performance. Cormac possesses that ability to clear the room, not because he’s not good – he’s great, no one delivers it better – but because he lacks timing. When everybody is about to lift the ceiling off, he does his piece, dark and quiet and sad, which is in direct contradiction to what everybody wants. He kills the atmosphere, lets the energy dip. He does the same in conversation, brings up something sombre when they’re all laughing.

His sister Cara has also escaped their brother’s moment. She notices Solomon looking around, senses his mood.

‘Out there’ – she points out the window – ‘gone to show her the cuckoos, our cuckoo-fucking-expert.’ She does Solomon the decency of not even laughing at that. Solomon controls himself, his pace, tries to control his heart rate as he makes his way through the growing crowd to the door that leads to the garden. Once at the door, he stalls, his hand on the handle.

And what is so wrong with Laura being outside with Rory? Apart from it driving Solomon insane, she’s a twenty-six-year-old woman who can do what she likes. What’s he going to do, break them up? Declare that they can’t be together? He knows his brother well, knows exactly what he wants from Laura, what any man would want from any young beautiful woman they have a private moment with, but his brother is not a sexual predator. He won’t be on top of Laura, pinning her down to the ground; she doesn’t need rescuing.