She doesn’t remember this place that she’s in. She doesn’t remember getting here, how she got to this room or who she’s with. She looks at the pair of Converse with the dead phone and she recognises it as Rory’s. So he’s here, quite possibly the person lying on the bed. He brought her here. She can’t blame him for what happened, she can only blame herself. She’s twenty-six years old and she should have known better. She’s so ashamed of herself for losing control, for such irresponsibility, for allowing others to see her like that, she can’t bring herself to wake Rory. She’s still wearing her boots, she doesn’t care about finding her jacket, she just wants to get out of there.

She stands up and steadies herself as her head swirls. She takes a moment for the dizziness to pass, takes long deep breaths as silently as possible so as not to stir the sleeping others. The room is hot and stuffy. It smells of alcohol and hot bodies, which turns her stomach. She steps over the shoes and bottles, falling over and catching herself on the wall. She bangs against the wall and hears somebody stir behind her, waking as if in fright. She doesn’t look back, she keeps walking, she knows she needs to get out of there before they wake.

Out of the bedroom she finds herself in a corridor. She sees the main door. The next door is the bathroom, then the front door. She passes an open-plan living and kitchen area, more bodies on floors and couches, a couple slowly kissing on the couch, his hand moving around inside her top as she makes soft breathy sounds.

She thinks of Solomon and Bo in the hotel when they were making love and she must have made a sound, given herself away, because suddenly the couple stop kissing and look up. A head pops out from the kitchen.

‘What the fuck was that noise?’ the girl asks.

‘The bird,’ the guy on the couch says.

‘Lyrebird,’ she says, giggling.

‘Whatever. Hi,’ he says and she thinks she recognises him. She remembers him from the nightclub. He was friendly, offering to buy her drinks, giving out to somebody for accidentally shoving her as he passed. Getting the barman’s attention faster than the others. Whispering in her ear. Did he kiss her ear? Her neck? He’s the one who held her arm tightly when she stumbled.

‘I’m Gary, I’m an actor. Our premiere was tonight at the festival,’ he says. She remembers being impressed, she’d never met an actor before. Not a professional one anyway, as it turned out.

‘Gary, you little shit,’ the girl says, hitting him, jumping up from the couch so quickly she knees him by mistake. He groans. ‘You told her you were a fucking actor? Who are you, Leonardo DiCaprio?’

‘I was only messing, babe, chill out.’

‘Don’t babe me,’ she wallops him again, which stirs the others, who are sleeping.

Her voice is familiar. Laura studies her, trying to pinpoint how she knows her. Then she remembers. In the toilet, her head literally in the toilet, trying to ignore the dried shit, hearing laughter, that girl’s voice, looking up between retches to see a camera phone in their hands.

‘Stop,’ Laura had said, trying to block her face.

‘Get out of here, Lisa,’ another voice had said.

‘It’s going on Facebook,’ she says, leaving the bathroom. ‘Lyrebird, dirtbird,’ she says, giggling.

Laura must have said this all out loud.

‘Cara, you put photos of her puking on Facebook?’ Gary asks. ‘And you’re giving out to me?’

‘Are you okay?’ a voice says from the kitchen. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

Laura doesn’t recognise her face, but she knows her voice instantly. It was the one that was in her ear. ‘Ssh. Ssh. It’s going to be okay.’

Laura knows she has repeated this because the girl is smiling. She has a friendly face, it’s nice to see one. She holds a cup of tea out to her.

Laura shakes her head and keeps walking to the door. She should go into the bathroom to clean herself up, but she knows she must leave, she doesn’t want Rory to wake up, she doesn’t want to have to deal with talking about what happened.

She has no idea where she is, or where her bags are. She’s in an apartment block somewhere. She heads for the fire escape and runs down five flights of stairs, thinking someone is chasing her, not hearing any footsteps but afraid to stop or look behind her in case they catch her. It’s like a bad dream being played out and she’s the one playing it out with an overactive imagination. She races downstairs, clinging to the rail, hand brushing the metal and feeling splinters from the chipped paint. She thinks she’ll be stuck on that staircase forever, that it will never end, until finally she reaches the ground floor. She passes a wall of grey postboxes, all numbers no address, not that it would mean anything to her anyway. She bursts out on to the street, hoping to see somewhere familiar, one of the places she’s been to with Solomon, Bo, or Rachel, but she doesn’t recognise it. Across from her is an identical building, beside and all around her is the same.

A loud horn frightens her and she looks up in time to see the city tram headed straight for her. She jumps onto the path, her heart pounding as the driver shouts as he passes.

When she has calmed herself somewhat, she looks left and right, decides to go left in the direction of the tram, it must be bringing people somewhere. Somewhere is better than the unknown, that same thought pattern she’s had since Bo and Solomon came into her life. Follow them, they’re going somewhere, somewhere is better than nowhere. While she walks she thinks of the sound of the tram that almost stopped her heart. She doesn’t hear herself mimicking it, though she hears its sound, like a song she can’t get out of her head. But people are startled, jumping away, some laughing when she nears.

Perhaps she’s not making a sound at all, perhaps it’s the sight of her that is so shocking to them and the smell of her. The vomit in her hair, the dried vomit on her boots that she sees now for the first time. She looks a disgrace, she smells even worse. She attempts to tie back her hair, make her appearance neater, especially when a camera phone comes out of a bag. It’s like a tidal effect, once one is out it gives others the permission, the confidence to do the same.

She feels the beat in her chest of last night’s music, the people shouting, the broken glass, the muffled sounds that blend together into one noisy, disturbing cacophony. She holds her hands to her ears, to block it all out. The people staring at her, the phones are held up, the flashbulbs of the photographers, now she remembers. The photographers. Oh God, people will see her in the newspaper. Would they print such awful pictures? She thinks of Solomon, opening his morning paper. If he sees her, she will never look him in the eye again, such is her embarrassment.

She hears the rustle of his morning paper while Bo clicks away on her phone, everything for her on a screen, everything for him to be touched. Rustle, click, tram warning, smash of a glass. An angry taxi man, shouting at her. A rough hand on her arm. She remembers now. She’d thrown up in the taxi, he’d thrown them out. She’d kneeled on the roadside and vomited some more. The lads laughing. Blue Converses standing beside her, splashing the white tip with vomit. More laughter. A hand on her head now and then, an arm around her waist. Not being able to stand, being taken away, a girl, the nice girl asking the owner of the arm around her waist what he thinks he’s doing. Rory telling the man with the hand around her waist to back off. What was he going to do to her? Her cheeks flame with the shame that she allowed herself to end up in that position.

Then the bathroom. The toilet bowl. The shit stain on the side. A warm blanket. A glass of water. Distant laughter and music.

She holds her hands over her ears, she sinks to the ground, trying to hide from the cameras. Her mum and Gaga were right to hide her, she’s not able for all of this, she can’t run anywhere. She wishes they’d hide her now.

As she thinks of them, the noises in her head start to calm. She can think more clearly, as the thoughts quieten she hears herself whimpering, crying, breathless, hiccups. She’s sitting on the ground. A crowd gathers around her. Some people too polite to look directly at her but still they hover nearby. She looks up at the person standing beside her. A garda. A female one. Mam and Gaga said not to trust them. But this garda seems kind. She looks worried. She bends down, gets to her level and smiles, concern in her eyes. ‘Want to come with me?’

She holds out her hand and Laura takes it. She has nowhere else to go. Somewhere is better than nowhere.

30

Laura sits in a corner of the room in the garda station, wrapped in a blanket. Between her hands she holds a mug of hot tea, which has helped to calm her. She waits for somebody to pick her up, she wouldn’t give Solomon or Bo’s name, she doesn’t want them to see her like this, or know anything about what has happened. Her pride has been bruised. She wanted to prove that she could be okay without them and she failed.