Laura closes her eyes and breathes in, loving the fresh air and the sound of new accents and birdcalls. When she turns around, she sees the hair and make-up team, the journalist and press photographer gathered at the door staring at her.

‘What?’ she asks, self-consciously. ‘Did I ruin my hair?’

Wanda, the sweet make-up artist, looks at her with amusement, ‘You sounded like a kookaburra.’

‘Really?’ Laura smiles.

‘And a whipbird,’ the hair stylist says.

‘I don’t even know what a whipbird is,’ Laura smiles.

They join her on the verandah, while Bianca nervously watches the time. She was chosen to come on this trip with Lyrebird because of their closeness in age. Bianca is a year younger than Laura and this trip is a big promotion for her, but Laura can tell her handler is just as nervous as she is, despite trying to hide it with her cool and confident demeanour.

‘There,’ Wanda says, ‘that’s the kookaburra. Jane, what does a whipbird sound like?’

They all listen in silence.

‘There,’ Jane whispers. She looks at Laura. ‘There.’

Laura closes her eyes and listens. She doesn’t even notice herself attempting it but they all start laughing with utter joy.

‘You are bloody amazing!’ they cry, and they point out as many other birds as they can, though their knowledge of birds isn’t broad. Magpies and cockatoos – that’s as far as they get in identifying sounds, but Laura doesn’t need to know what they are, she enjoys hearing strange sounds anyway. Despite Bianca pointing out that they’re now behind time, Laura appreciates everybody pausing in this moment with her.

‘This is nice,’ Jane lifts her face to the sky and closes her eyes. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to just… stop.’

The others nod in silent agreement, breathing in the fresh air, lapping up their moment of time out before it all kicks off again, more appointments, home to their families, or their salons, always on the go, always planning the next thing. At least now they can be in the now.

‘You’ve come at the right time,’ Grace explains. ‘Lyrebirds mate in the depths of winter, the adult males start singing a half-hour before sunrise, singing for their lives,’ she laughs.

‘You know what the weird thing is,’ Bianca says. ‘You might not even be mimicking a real kookaburra.’

They all turn to Bianca.

‘You could be mimicking a lyrebird mimicking a kookaburra.’

Which is quite an interesting thing to come from Bianca. Bianca seems to be surprised by herself. Laura and Bianca laugh as if sharing a private joke.

Dress number one on, Laura and the team go outside for the first shot. She feels everybody’s curious eyes on her; the stylist’s team, the press photographer, the magazine photographer and his assistant, Grace the journalist. She feels self-conscious under their gaze.

Despite June being midwinter in Australia, the lushness of the greenery is beautiful. The air is fresh, she’s glad of that. After air-conditioned airplanes and the hotel room, she can fill her lungs now. She longs to take a walk, but the stylist doesn’t want the shoes to get dirty. The shoes don’t fit, they’ve been stuffed in the front with tissue. The dress is too loose and has been clamped down the back, making it difficult for her to bend. She can turn to look at the lyrebird, but not so much that the camera catches the clamps, she’s warned.

While they’re doing more touch-ups to her face and the photographer busies himself checking the light, she hears Bianca tell somebody over the phone that Lyrebird is going to be walking down the steps on the Cory Cooke Show. Great news. Everybody at the shoot is impressed. Lyrebird won’t be sitting on the couch, she won’t be in the front row. Whether she sits at all is TBC. Laura laughs to herself. They look at her as though she is peculiar, which makes her laugh again. They think she is being peculiar now?

The photographer has a quiet word with Laura. He takes her aside, makes a big deal of it, all intense and brooding. He’s handsome, his T-shirt is tight around his biceps, his black jeans fall low on his hips revealing an impressive V-line and Laura wonders if he’s wearing any underwear. Laura feels that he’s flirting with her, even though he’s just discussing the shots. It’s in his face. In his lips and eyes. The thought of this, and no underpants, piques her interest until she realises he looks at everything that way, all around him, a squint, a purse of his lips, a hand through his hair. He flirts with everything he sees. She’s feeling tired now. She had a bowl of seasonal fruits at the hotel, but perhaps it wasn’t enough. She feels slightly faint, light-headed. All these people, so many quirks, so much to analyse and understand in order to work with them; it’s draining. Bianca must be feeling the same because she sits quietly away from everybody, sipping a bottle of water.

Laura looks around the forest. ‘Are we going to wait for a lyrebird to fly into shot…?’

‘We’re bringing the lyrebird to us,’ Grace says with a smile.

And they do. Just as they flew Laura to them, the actual lyrebird arrives in a cage, carried by a ranger who places the distressed bird down on the woodland floor. It looks like a guinea fowl with a long neck and impressive plumage. The photographer tells her where to stand, the soles of her shoes have been taped over so they won’t get dirty, she’s been warned not to ‘scuff’ them, they must be returned to the store by the evening. Everyone watches her expectantly.

Laura doesn’t know what they’re expecting will happen. Do they think she will suddenly start a conversation with the bird in a secret lyrebird language? It’s a bird. A distressed bird that has been scooped from freedom to captivity, driven across the reserve and plonked beside a jet-lagged woman, and Laura knows that, despite her nickname, she’s human, a human that does not possess superpowers to communicate with or understand feathered creatures. Nor does the actual lyrebird possess that quality, both of them are mere mimics. But everyone watches, excited, moved by the pairing of these two species.

The photographer won’t allow the lyrebird out of the cage until he gets his light reading. The lyrebird is in distress. Laura mimics his sound, watching him. As soon as it is let out of its cage it hops behind a tree, instantly, for safety.

‘I don’t blame you,’ Laura says aloud. She follows it, ignoring the calls that they can see the clamps lining the back of the dress that’s two sizes too big for her. She kicks off her shoes and the stylist rushes to pick them up. She gets closer to the bird, and she stands still and watches it, getting a good look at it.

The bird mimics the whirr of the camera shutter. Laura smiles and hunches down. The photographer wants her to get closer, but she knows the bird will run away, it’s what she would do. It’s what she should do.

The photographer is down, hunkered down, trying to get a good angle. He’s talking to her, telling her to turn her face this way and that, her chin this way and that. Open her fingers, close her fingers, rest her arm, relax her arm. Look at the lyrebird, look over the lyrebird. Pretend you’re looking at the lyrebird but over its head, into the distance. You’re squinting, close your eyes and open them on three. No sausage fingers, give a posh mouth, bend her knee, tilt her chin, no, not that way, the other way. Bond with the lyrebird.

If the photographer takes one step closer to her she’ll run, she’ll hide. She’ll do what this funny little creature is doing.

She remembers at her house she went out playing. She was supposed to be home by lunch but she misjudged the time. She arrived at the house and a customer was there, a car in the driveway. Children were playing in the garden, waiting outside for their mother. Laura hadn’t been so close to other children before. She’d read about them in books, seen them on the TV, watched them from car windows on trips out of Cork. She hid from them in the forest, so close she felt she was one of them but so far they never knew she existed. They’d played Pooh sticks in the stream and she’d even dared to throw her own stick in, pretending to be a part of the gang. The kids thought the stick had fallen from a tree. She planned her hiding adventures after that. Hikers and walkers, hunters and ramblers.

When Laura looks up she sees tears in the eyes of the make-up artist. The photographers are snapping happily. Laura’s not sure what sound she made recalling her childhood, but her sounds had made them sad. It is only when the lyrebird imitates her sounds that she realises exactly what she sounded like; he relays the sound of children’s joyous laughter. She looks at the lyrebird in surprise. He looks back at her.

They are both silent. She gazes deep into his little eyes, wondering if perhaps they do have a connection, perhaps everyone is right, perhaps they can understand each other.

The photographer takes a step closer and the lyrebird scarpers. He lowers the camera, disappointed. Laura watches the bird, happy that he has escaped. She hopes he finds his mate. She longs for hers.

That evening at 9.42 p.m., after Jack’s interview with Cory Cooke where he has discussed his past success, his dabble with drugs, his stint in rehab, his failed marriage and his climb to the top and unexpected success with StarrQuest, Cory Cooke announces his next guest: Lyrebird.

‘Not since Police Academy’s Man of Ten Thousand Noises, Michael Winslow, have we seen anyone like this. Dubbed Lyrebird, our next guest auditioned on talent show StarrQuest in Ireland and in one week has received two hundred million hits on YouTube. That’s staggering.’

‘It’s two hundred and twenty now, actually,’ Jack interrupts and the audience laughs.