‘I’m here, Mum, it’s Laura,’ Laura takes her hand and holds it to her lips.

‘Mummy,’ she repeats. Her eyes are open, they look around as if searching for Gaga.

Laura’s heart pounds. She hurries to the window and peeks through the blinds toward the garage. There’s no sign of Gaga, the customer’s car is still in the drive. She looks back from her mother to the garage, feeling trapped, the most trapped she’s ever felt in her life. If she calls Gaga, the customer will hear or see her. They’d all made a pact that Laura would never be seen, not until she’s the legal age. It was long understood and long unspoken. The idea of her being out in the world before she’s sixteen terrifies them.

Laura is torn. Her mother’s breathing is shallow, she knows she’s leaving the world, she can’t call Gaga and risk anybody discovering her existence, but she can’t let her mum go thinking that she’s on her own.

The panic. The hot feeling that overwhelms her body, as sweat breaks out on her brow and trickles down her back. The palpitations. The cold fear. She is losing her mum and while she wants to shout to the world for help, she knows she can’t risk being taken away from Gaga too. She would lose everything.

She doesn’t want her mum to die thinking she is alone, just as she will feel without hers. She doesn’t want Gaga to know that her daughter died without her thinking she was there. She sits beside her, closes her eyes and wills every single part of her to solve the problem, to save her in the moment.

She opens her mouth and sings, and when she sings, she hears Gaga’s voice, the voice of an older woman with a Yorkshire accent. Isabel squeezes her hand.

The broken tree, with a broken limb,

Stands where the grass is brown, and the sky is dim.

Flowers are forever buds,

A skeleton tree in the luscious woods.

No spiders crawl, no animals reign,

On the broken tree, with a broken limb.

But on the branch a She Bird props,

With her beak held high, and her eyes apop.

As she sings her song for all

The buds open wide and the petals fall.

The spiders crawl and weave their webs,

The fruit flies flee from the strawberry beds

The broken tree is broken no more when the She Bird sits to sing her lore.

The tree’s alive, the limb’s repaired,

The animals inhabit because they all have heard.

Children climb, and laugh and play,

The broken tree comes alive for just one day.

The She Bird’s song stops and she flies away

And the broken tree returns that way.

Solomon and Bo are holding their breath as they watch Laura. It’s not just her voice that has changed as she recalls the song from her mother’s deathbed, somehow she has managed to allow the spirit of her Gaga to inhabit her. It is nothing short of magical. Bo turns to Solomon, looks at him for the first time since she effectively left him; her eyes are wide and filled with tears. He reaches for her hand and she takes it, squeezes it. Laura opens her eyes and looks at their hands, joined.

Bo wipes her cheek and Laura smiles.

‘Was that…’ She clears her throat to remove the emotion and starts again. ‘Was that the first time you realised you had this skill?’

‘Yes,’ she says softly. ‘It’s the first time I realised it. But then, when I realised it, it became clear it wasn’t the first time I’d done it.’

Bo nods at her to tell her more.

‘Gaga brought it up with me one day, years before. We were lying on the grass, behind the house, I was making daisy chains. Mam was reading a book, she loved romance books, Gaga hated them. Mam would sometimes read the sentences aloud, just to annoy Gaga,’ she laughs. ‘I can hear them, at each other. Gaga blocking her ears la la la la.’

Isabel isn’t reading aloud. It is silent. And suddenly Gaga starts laughing.

‘That was a good one, Laura,’ she says.

Laura has no idea what she is talking about.

‘Stop it,’ Laura’s mum says to her, glaring at her over the book.

‘What? It was a particularly good sound. She’s getting better, Isabel. You have to admit it.’

Laura sits up in the long grass. ‘What am I getting better at?’

Gaga raises her eyebrows at her daughter.

‘Nothing, love, nothing. Ignore your Gaga, she’s going senile.’

‘Well, we all know that. But there’s nothing wrong with my ears,’ Gaga winks at Laura.

Laura giggles. ‘Tell me.’

Mum lowers her book. She glares at Gaga, but there’s submission in the look, like she’s giving her permission but warning her to tread carefully.

‘You make these wonderful sounds, dear child. Haven’t you noticed?’

‘Sounds? No. What kind of sounds?’ Laura laughs, thinking Gaga is fooling her.

‘All kinds of sounds. Just then you were buzzing like a bee. I almost thought I was about to be stung!’ She gives a belly laugh.

‘No, I wasn’t,’ Laura says, confused.

Her mother looks at Gaga, there’s concern in her eyes.

‘Oh, indeed you did, my little bumble bee,’ she closes her eyes and raises her head to the sun.

‘No, I didn’t, why would you say that?’ Laura says, voice shaking.

‘I heard you,’ she says simply.

‘Enough now, Mother.’

‘Okay,’ she replies, looking at Mum through one eye, then closes it again.

Laura stares at the two of them. Her Gaga lazy in a deckchair, Mum reading her book. Rage rushes through her.

‘You’re a liar!’ she shouts, then runs from the garden and into the house.

‘How old were you?’ Bo asks.

‘I was seven. It didn’t come up again for a long time. Maybe a year later. Mum didn’t want to talk about it, she knew I was sensitive about it, and Gaga was under strict instructions not to say a word.’

‘Why do you think you were particularly sensitive about it?’

‘Do you know what it’s like to be constantly told you’re doing something that you don’t even know you’re doing?’

Bo smiles at that, she bites her lip. She glances at Solomon, a cheeky look in her eye. ‘Let’s say yes, I do know that feeling. It makes you feel like you’re going crazy. It makes you resent the person who’s saying it.’

Solomon hears her.

‘Even if you know they’re only saying it for your own good,’ Laura says. ‘Even if you know they couldn’t possibly be making it up, because you trust them. It makes you question everything. I made a sound once that really startled Mum. It made her want to talk about it.’

‘What sound was it?’

‘A police radio.’ Laura swallows. ‘The sounds I made were only ever sounds that I had heard. I could have got it from the television, of course, but it felt to Mum like it was real. She couldn’t ignore that sound. That’s the sound they’d both been afraid of for a very long time. She wanted to know where I’d heard it, but I didn’t know what sound she was talking about, I didn’t realise I’d made it. We managed to narrow it down, though. It was the police radio. I’d heard it one day when they’d both left the house. I’d been in my bedroom, the curtains were closed just like they were supposed to be. Living in a bungalow, we had to be careful about who would look in the windows when Mum and Gaga weren’t around.’

‘They left you in the house alone at seven years of age?’ Bo asks, concerned.

‘They were in the woods, they were foraging. I decided to stay home, read a book. I heard a car approach the house. I got down on the ground and hid under the bed. I heard footsteps on the gravel. They were close to my window. I felt like somebody was outside the window. Then I heard the sound of the police radio.’ Laura shudders as she tells the story. ‘I didn’t tell Mum and Gaga about it when they came home, I didn’t want them to be afraid. Nothing had happened, so there was no reason to tell them, but then I revealed it anyway in my sounds.’

‘How did your mother take it?’

‘She panicked. She called Gaga. Made me tell the story over and over, exactly what I heard, over and over again. I was confused. I knew they were nervous around the guards, but I never knew why.’

‘Did they tell you?’

‘I asked them that day. I thought they were afraid I’d be taken away because of the sounds I was making. As soon as Mum heard that, she sat me down and told me the whole story. Her and Gaga. They told me everything.’

‘Everything…’

Laura looks at Solomon. She takes a deep breath. ‘About how my granddad died.’

Solomon takes his headphones off, ‘Laura, are you sure you… Bo, maybe we should turn the camera off…’

‘Already have,’ Bo says, turning to look at him, her eyes wide. She and Solomon had both read the tabloid article about Isabel and Hattie’s alleged involvement in Laura’s grandfather’s death, a story Bo had heard in Cork when she had asked around about Hattie and Isabel. It was the story she had been digging for when she interviewed Laura at the Button cottage, but now she’s afraid to record it. She’s not sure she wants to hear the truth. How everything shifts.

‘Laura,’ Solomon says gently as he places his equipment down, ‘you don’t have to tell this story.’

‘I think that I do.’

‘You don’t,’ Bo urges. ‘Please don’t feel that you have to. I’m not pressurising you.’

‘Neither am I,’ Solomon says firmly. ‘In fact,’ he adds, getting to his feet, ‘perhaps we should take a break, stretch our legs. It’s late. It’s almost three a.m. It’s been a long night, an emotional one. Tomorrow’s a big day, we should-’