Page 78 of Lyrebird

In a city centre hotel, pacing the floor of the box bedroom, Laura’s heart pounds with panic.

What has she done, what has she done? She’s cut herself off from the people she truly needs. Yet despite the fear of what she’s done, she knows it’s the right thing. The atmosphere in the apartment is toxic. She had to get away from them, and wasn’t it Solomon who was slowly cutting himself off from her? At first it was off and on, and then he disappeared and he cut the ties completely. She may have lived alone for most of her life but she can still read people.

The phone rings, giving her a fright.

‘Hello.’

‘It’s Jane calling from reception, Ms Button, we have a man here named Solomon who wishes to see you. Should I send him up?’

Her heart pounds.

‘Yes, thank you.’ She can barely breathe.

She rushes to the bathroom and splashes water on her face. Her mind races as she thinks of what to say. How she will refuse to go back to the apartment. Or perhaps she won’t refuse at all, maybe this is exactly what she wants. He’s saved her again, he’s going to take her from this hotel where she doesn’t want to be anyway.

There’s a knock at her door.

She doesn’t trust herself being in the same room as him. What she’s feeling for him is wrong. She puts the chain on the door before opening it.

Solomon’s dark eyes sear into hers. She swallows. He looks at the chain, hurt.

‘I understand if you don’t want to see me, I wouldn’t blame you after what we’ve done. I want to apologise for everything. I’m sorry for what Bo said today, I’m sorry I asked you to enter StarrQuest, I’m sorry I left you this week, I’m sorry I took you from your home. I’m sorry about it all.’

Laura’s heart pounds. She can barely think straight with all she’s hearing.

‘I don’t blame you for leaving the apartment. You’re right and I don’t blame you if you never want to see either of us again.’ He looks down. ‘I just came here to say that I’m sorry. You’re right that you’ll be better off without us. The show will take care of you. There is so much out there for you.’

She feels his hand on hers, and she looks down and sees that he has reached through the gap in the door. His touch is soft and her body tingles. She feels a rush of adrenaline, and sweet sadness. She feels the ache of his goodbye. He’s slipping away, she’s watching it happen, and her heart pounds and pounds like a warning drum. She wanted him to take her from here. She wanted him to say that they wanted her back. Instead, he’s letting her go.

‘If you ever need me,’ he says, embarrassed to suggest it after all that he feels he’s done, ‘I’m here. I’ll always be here.’

Then before he’s had time to finish his final word, his hand is gone and so is he, leaving Laura breathless and staring at an empty gap.

The pain in her head seems to shift to her heart, her entire chest aches. She slides down the wall, pushes the door closed and sits on the floor until the room gets dark, feeling yet another great loss in her life.

What has she done?

25

Laura was wrong about Bo’s luck. It goes from bad to worse for her documentary as the public gets behind Lyrebird. Before she knows what’s happening, Laura has been granted an emergency passport to fly to Australia. Mouth to Mouth productions are absolutely not allowed to accompany her on the trip. After the revelation of Lyrebird’s sad and solitary life, she is firmly in the nation’s hearts. They want to help her get along as much as possible.

By Sunday evening, carrying a new small carry-on case, Laura boards a flight to Australia. She will arrive on Tuesday morning at 06.25. She will do interviews and a photoshoot on Tuesday, the big TV appearance on Wednesday, then will leave Australia on Thursday at 22.25, returning to Dublin on Saturday night at 11.20. Two days in Australia. She will be back in time for her semi-final performance on Monday.

Despite her early arrival, Laura has to begin work at twelve. The assumption is that she’ll have had plenty of rest in first-class during her twenty-three-hour journey. In reality, she barely blinked, there was so much to take in, to process. She’d never been at an airport before, nor on a plane, and once on the plane she kept mimicking the sounds – much to the air steward’s frustration as she mimicked the ping of the call button. He stopped coming to her after the first four times, but then when she really needed him to help her with her tray, he wasn’t there.

She’s wide-eyed and alert on the way to her hotel. There is so much to see, she has been greeted at the airport by more photographers and reporters, then bundled into a black jeep. She’s taken to the Langham Hotel, to a beautiful hotel suite. She soaks in a bath and is starting to nod off when Bianca phones to tell her the car is ready to take her to the photoshoot in the Dandenong Ranges.

Laura sits in the back seat of the car, quietly, no conversation between her and Bianca, but she’s happy with that. There is so much of this new world to take in. The new accents, sounds, smells, the new look. Despite wanting to immerse herself in what feels like a new world, she can’t help but feel detached. It’s as though there is a piece of her missing, a piece that she has left at home. She’s homesick. She’s felt like this twice in her life: when she moved from her family home to the Toolin cottage and when she moved from that home to Dublin. She feels disconnected, like the same person but in the wrong place. It is a surreal feeling, while everybody carries on as normal around her.

Photo with Lyrebird, is all the schedule says, but what Laura discovers on arrival is that the destination for the photoshoot is an enchanting boutique wedding venue called Lyrebird Falls, set within the evergreen forest of the Dandenong Ranges on the edge of Melbourne.

A crew waits for her. She shakes so many hands and hears so many names that go out of her head immediately, she barely has a chance to look around before she is seated in a chair for hair and make-up. Everyone is friendly and chatty, everyone is dressed in black, but she can’t help feeling disconnected, like she’s there but on the outside, watching everybody. She can’t get inside the moment.

They have all seen her audition on StarrQuest. They all ask her polite questions about her talent, where did she learn to do it, how did she learn to do it? She has no answers for them and they fall into a polite silence. Bianca tells her she should prepare some of these answers in her head, for future interviews. Laura mulls over all of these questions, never having had to analyse herself and her actions so much in her life. Why does she do the things that she does, why is she the person she is? Laura wonders why these things are in any way important to other people.

Despite the hair and make-up team being familiar with her audition piece, they are concerned with her spontaneous bursts. The stylist unzips a bag, Laura mimics it.

‘Are you okay?’