Page 49 of Lyrebird

He showers quickly and goes downstairs. Every single window of the house is open to air the stench of stale smoke and drink. Marie is sitting at the kitchen table in her dressing gown, with her neighbours, drinking Bloody Marys.

‘Will you have a fry?’ she asks, her voice tired. The festivities have taken it out of her.

‘I’m grand, thanks, Mam. Have you lads not been home yet?’ Solomon jokes, pouring milk into his cereal.

‘Yes, but we came around again for round two, ding ding!’ their neighbour Jim laughs, lifting his Bloody Mary. ‘Sláinte.’ Despite his cheer, the mood is calm as they dissect the goings on of the night. ‘Your Lyrebird is a real treasure,’ he says.

‘How did you know she’s called Lyrebird?’

‘She told us. Said you’d named her that. Not familiar myself, but sounds like a fascinating bird. Nowhere near as fascinating as the girl, though. My word, that’s some set of organs on her.’

‘A great set of organs all right,’ Rory says suddenly, shuffling into the kitchen sleepily and scratching his head.

‘She went across to the beach,’ Marie says, watching Solomon closely, trying to hide her knowing smile as he suddenly throws heaped spoons of cereal into his mouth in an effort to finish quickly and get outside to Laura.

‘Mind if I—’ He stands up and dumps the cereal bowl in the sink.

‘Go.’ She smiles. ‘But don’t forget you promised your dad you’d go shooting today.’

Laura is standing at the water’s edge in another of her interesting fashion concoctions. It looks like she’s wearing a man’s shirt, probably Tom’s, but using her alteration skills she has adjusted it to fit as a dress, added clashing fabric of another shirt along the bottom for length, with a leather belt knotted around her waist, a pair of black Doc Martens with woollen socks pulled up to below her knee, which work on her long lean legs, and a denim jacket. Solomon doesn’t know much about fashion, but he knows she’s certainly not following any trends. Even so, she looks cool. She looks like the kind of woman he’d chat up in a bar, the kind of woman who’d turn his head. The kind of woman who could turn his heart.

Laura feels like she could stand at the water’s edge for ever; it has been years since she has been near the sea, since her last family holiday with Gaga and Mum in Dingle. She could easily stay standing here, but that was the problem with Laura, she could stay anywhere she set her mind to, for ever. Full days spent in the forest, leaning against a tree trunk, gazing up through the leaves at the sky. An entire day, lost in her mind, in her memory, in her daydreams. But not any more; she has to stop this, she needs to change with the change, prepare for a new direction.

She closes her eyes and listens to the water lapping gently, she almost starts to sway with the relaxation. The seagulls sing overhead and she relishes the beauty and perfection of the moment. It’s made even more perfect with the arrival of him. She smells him before she hears him.

‘Hi, Solomon,’ she says before he says anything, before she even turns around.

‘Hi.’ He laughs. ‘Are you psychic too?’

‘That would mean I know what’s going to happen in the future,’ she says, turning to look at him. ‘I wish I knew that.’ He’s wearing a blue long-sleeved cotton top, with buttons open at the top. A few dark hairs on his chest peep out. The sides of his head are shaved short and tight, but the rest of his black waves and curls are tied up in a high ponytail. She’s never seen a man with a ponytail before, but she likes it. He’s still masculine, like a warrior, and it shows off his features, his high cheekbones, his strong jaw that is always covered in stubble. She wants to run her hands over it as he does when he’s thinking, looking lost and intense.

‘What was that?’ he frowns.

‘What?’ she asks.

‘That noise.’

She wasn’t even aware she’d made one, but she’d been thinking of one. The sound of his fingers brushing his stubble, the motion he makes when he’s thinking. She likes that sound.

‘Would you really like to know what happens in the future?’ he asks, standing beside her, looking out to sea.

‘Sometimes I’m more interested in what happened in the past,’ she admits. ‘I think about conversations I’ve had, or have overheard, or even things that I haven’t. I think them through, imagine how they could have gone, would have gone.’

‘Like …?’

‘Like my mum and Tom. How they had this secret love affair, I imagine it – not, you know, all of it, but …’

‘I know what you mean,’ he says, eager for her to continue.

‘I think that was probably my flaw. Why I never left the mountain. I was so busy thinking about the past, I forgot to plan for my future.’

She feels his eyes searing into her and she looks away; she can’t take their heat.

‘What about you?’ she asks.

‘What about me? I’ve forgotten what we were talking about.’ He’s not joking. He’s nervous.

‘Future thinker or past thinker?’