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?’

She unfolds a fantastic rail that magically appears from a small bag, and begins to hang the clothes.

Laura mimics the sound of the hairspray.

‘Do you need some water?’

‘Are you rehearsing?’

What hasn’t been explained in the multitude of print and social media that’s been dedicated to Laura Lyrebird Button is that this ‘gift’ she has is completely and utterly natural. It is not contrived, concocted, conceived as part of an act. It is within her, part of her. It is her make-up, her function, her way to communicate, as others have their own ways. There is no talk of her spontaneity, her quirk, if you will. It’s almost as though it isn’t seen, it doesn’t want to be seen, as though the only gifts these days that are taken seriously are those that come in packages, carefully wrapped, and well-presented to the world. She cannot turn it on and off like a tap, yet it’s left to Laura to rein it in, when they knew what they were getting in the first place.

Not once did Solomon ask her to stop or ask her why she made one single sound. Not once. Laura’s head spins and she aches for him.

She absorbs the new sounds, new accents, the increase in tone at the end of their sentences.

This evening is an appearance on the Cory Cooke Show. Jack will do an interview on the couch, also on is Will Smith, who’s promoting his new movie. And then on the show is Lyrebird.

‘What am I doing on the show?’ Laura asks Bianca.

‘Schedule says TBC,’ she explains, looking up from the rail of clothes. She’s holding dresses against her body, posing in the mirror.

‘What does TBC mean?’

Bianca assesses her for a moment to see if she’s serious. ‘To be confirmed. We’ll find out later what they want you to do.’

An hour later, hair and make-up on, clothes to be decided next, a total of six outfits for six shots, but have eight just in case. The show have been in touch with Bianca and the arrangement is to have Lyrebird sitting in the front row in the studio. Jack will do his interview ‘on the couch’ and the camera will throw to her as Jack discusses Lyrebird and her impact on the show. She is lucky, it seems, to be sitting in the front row in this studio, on the Cory Cooke Show.

An hour later, when photos emerge of her at the airport and social media hype grows that Lyrebird is in Australia, the TV show call Bianca as Laura is finished make-up. Laura’s front-row position in the audience is to be increased to two questions from the host, Cory Cooke. Questions are TBC after the staff meeting. By the time her hair is complete, Lyrebird has been moved from the front row in the audience to now walking down the illustrious steps that only celebrities are allowed to walk down. This, Bianca tells her, is a great honour. Bianca seems to see Laura in a new light. What Lyrebird will do when she gets to the end of the steps is TBC.

Laura begins to relax when she is given a minute to step outside for fresh air before she puts on her first outfit. She hadn’t felt uptight but the forest lets her fall into an even deeper relaxation. She’d almost forgotten how it felt to be in that state of relaxation, almost hypnotic, as she went about her days and chores with a feeling of harmony. Even in her most relaxed moments in Dublin, on the couch with a cup of tea, talking with Solomon, she was nowhere near that old feeling.