Cecelia Ahern - Lyrebird

‘Jack, bearing in mind your own personal journey in the music business, should you not have been more prepared for the effects fame can have on an artist? Isn’t that the whole point of having a mentor like you, someone with inside knowledge of the positive and negative effects of the industry?’

Jack stares at the journalist, almost like he’s frozen, shocked. He doesn’t know how to respond. Surprise, realisation, guilt, all pass over his face at once.

‘Will Lyrebird take part in the final?’

Jack manages to compose himself. ‘Lyrebird has a lot of supporters but she has a lot of critics. She will and should prove them wrong.’

Laura turns off the television in her bedroom and there’s silence. She likes it in this room. It feels like a cocoon. Safe. Her curtains are drawn all day and night, it has a pale nude palette, nothing at all like her Cork retreat. Like the rest of the house, it’s sparse, there’s no feeling that anybody has lived here, that anybody owns it. The place has no identity, apart from the swing set and slide that stand abandoned in the garden. She likes its lack of identity. Cream and beige, a pale furry rug. She snuggles under her duvet and closes her eyes. She listens out for her sounds, but nothing comes.

Nothing at all.

The first feathers to be shed by the male bird in the moult are the two fine, narrow, wire-like, lyre-shaped plumes which, when the tail is spread, project above the fan and are always maintained at an acute angle from the main plumes while the bird is displaying…

When the tail moult is complete, the male bird is hardly to be distinguished by a casual observer from the female for a period of several weeks. During this period the male bird keeps more or less in retirement. He disappears from his accustomed haunts and his singing is rarely to be heard… He never dances and seldom sings… Moreover, his general mien is sad and dejected. Close and prolonged study has induced the conclusion that the male Menura is an intensely proud and vain creature, who, when shorn of his magnificence, feels ashamed and disconsolate and is happiest in hiding.

Ambrose Pratt, The Lore of the Lyrebird

Bo sits alone in the silent apartment watching the clock. Solomon hasn’t returned from his trip to Galway yet, he hasn’t even phoned. She hasn’t called him either. She’s not sure if he’s coming home today or tomorrow. She’s not sure she cares. They’ve had so little to say to each other that’s positive, lately, and it’s clear to her that they’ve reached the end. This wasn’t just a speedbump – those were designed to make you slow down, get your wits about you, process what’s happening. No, this time they’d come up against an enormous stop sign, yelling at them to quit. No more moving forward.

She sits at the table, her head spinning, contemplating what’s left of her life. Her documentary has fallen apart, she doesn’t want to press charges against Laura as her dad was suggesting – that was never her intention. She needs to move on, that much she knows. But how can she move on? The embarrassment is not the worst thing that has come from this, though. Her reputation is a little tarnished, but that’s not what’s bothering her. It’s that she can’t bring herself to move on to the next story until she’s finished telling this one. Despite whatever Solomon might think, her heart is in Lyrebird’s story.

The phone rings and when she looks at the caller ID her heart leaps. Since they broke up and she embarked on a relationship with Solomon, Jack always managed to call her at her weakest moment; as if he could sense when she’s at her most vulnerable, her most likely moment to let him in. Since this Lyrebird legal mess had begun, she had been praying for the return of those calls that she’d begged him to cease.

‘Hello.’

‘Hi,’ Jack says, sounding defeated.

‘I appreciate you finally calling me back,’ she says unable to keep the anger from her tone.

He sighs. ‘Bo Peep. Help.’

She’s surprised by his tone. It’s rare for him.

‘It’s been so crazy around here the past few days. Really stressful. I’m exhausted, Bo,’ he says, and leaves a silence. ‘I thought I’d learned from all my mistakes last time round. I thought I knew how to help an act. I thought I could stop what happened to me from happening to them. I thought…’ He sighs. ‘I fucked up. I’m off my high horse now. Screw the lawyers. Screw it all. I need your help.’

‘My help?’

‘Lyrebird hasn’t left her bedroom for days. She hasn’t said a word to anyone, she hasn’t made a sound. We have no final if we don’t have her. We can’t pressure her to go on, there’s too much attention on us now. Everyone’s watching. Watching for the show to fuck up, for her to fuck up. I mean, when did it stop being about the talent? And I can’t say I blame her. I’ve been right where she is now.’

Bo is so surprised by this, she was expecting an argument.

‘Bo, we need your help. You know her better than us. What should we do?’

‘I gave you advice for the semi-final, I told you to go with a forest theme, I told you exactly what to do and you messed that up.’

‘I know, I know, I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘We’ve fucked up on this. I prided myself on protecting the talent, not on this happening. You know she reminds me of me, right now, where I was when everything went black. This is all bringing me back there…’ He goes quiet. ‘I mean, I’m not going to have a drink,’ he says, sounding like he’s trying to convince himself. ‘I’m not. But I had a cigarette. I hope that doesn’t spoil our chances,’ he adds a weak joke, his heart not in it.

‘Can we meet up?’ Bo asks, sitting up, feeling all the energy that drained from her surging back at full force. She’s worried about him, she’s excited about being included. Contact at last.

‘Please,’ he sighs. ‘We need all the help we can get. I need all the help I can get.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Bo says, standing up and grabbing things, throwing them into her bag. ‘But first, one little tip.’

‘Go on.’

‘Start by calling her Laura,’ she says gently.

‘Right. Got it,’ he says.

Laura awakes with a start, her heart drumming and the sound of chirping loud in her ears. If she had a nightmare she doesn’t remember it, but she feels the remaining panic in her heart and chest. Something scared her. She hears the other contestants downstairs talking and laughing, drinking after the latest drama, which has forced a contestant out of the show and caused another to join the house.