‘Please open the door, we just want to talk,’ Bo says.

Laura stares at Solomon from the window.

Then everyone looks at Solomon.

‘Tell her,’ Bo says to him.

‘What?’

‘She’s looking at you to see if it’s okay. Tell her that we only want to talk.’

‘Joe wants the dog,’ Solomon says honestly, and Rachel chuckles.

Laura disappears from the window.

‘Smooth,’ Rachel smirks. The two are now delirious from the lack of food.

Joe is about to bang on the door when it opens. Mossie runs out and she closes the door again and locks it.

Joe storms off while an excited Mossie dances around him, almost tripping him.

‘I’ll ring Jimmy,’ Joe grumbles as he passes. ‘He’ll sort her out.’

‘Wait, Joe,’ Bo calls after him.

‘Let it go,’ Rachel snaps. ‘I’m starving. Let’s head over to the hotel. Eat. Actual food. I need to call Susie. Then you can make a plan. I’m serious.’

Rachel rarely loses her temper. The only time she flares up is when something is disturbing her shot – people in the background making faces, or Solomon’s mic boom appearing in the frame – but when she does lose her temper everyone knows she means it. Bo knows she’s pushed them too far.

She gives in, for now.

Back at Gougane Barra Hotel, Solomon and Rachel dig into their dinners, not uttering a word, while Bo thinks aloud.

‘Tom must have known about this girl, right? He was the one who checked that area, that was part of his responsibility, checking the well a few times a week. You can’t check the well without noticing the cottage. Or the vegetable plot, or the goat and chickens. It would be impossible. And there’s the extra items of food on the shopping list, the bookshelves and the book from Bridget. Plus, Mossie knows her, so Tom must have brought him to visit her.’

‘He’s a dog,’ Solomon speaks for the first time since he started eating ten minutes ago. ‘Dogs wander. He could have met her himself.’

‘Good point.’

‘Met her,’ Rachel says. ‘Do dogs meet people? I guess they meet people who speak dog,’ she jokes, then stops laughing when the others don’t join in; Bo because she’s not listening, Solomon because he’s sensitive about mocking Laura. ‘Whatever. I’m going to call Susie.’ Rachel takes her plate of food with her to another table.

‘What is that thing she was doing? The noises?’ Bo asks Solomon. ‘Is it a Tourette’s thing? She growled and barked and chirped.’

‘As far as I know, people with Tourette’s don’t bark at people,’ Solomon says, licking the sticky sauce from his fingers before taking a bite of his pork ribs.

The sauce is all over his face. Bo looks at him in disgust, not understanding his absolute inability to function without food. She stops picking at her green salad.

‘You have your food now, why are you still snapping at me?’

‘I don’t think you handled today well.’

‘I think you’ve been jet-lagged, moody and irritable all day,’ she says. ‘Extra sensitive – which, for you, is saying a lot.’

‘You scared Laura.’

‘I scared Laura,’ she repeats, as she always does, as if saying the words again will help her to process them. She does the same during interviews with interviewees’ responses. It can be unsettling for them, as though she doesn’t believe them, but really it’s her trying to grasp what they’ve just said.

‘You could tell she was frightened. You could see a young woman, surrounded by four people in a forest. Three of us dressed in black for a funeral, like we’re ninjas. She was terrified, and you were filming.’

That set-up seems to occur to her suddenly. ‘Shit.’

‘Yes, shit.’ He sucks his fingers again and studies her. ‘What’s going on?’

‘What we saw today was remarkable. What that girl did-’

‘Laura.’

‘What Laura did, those sounds she made, it was like magic. And I don’t believe in magic. I’ve never heard anything like that before.’

‘Me neither.’

‘I got excited.’

‘You got greedy.’

Silence.

He finishes his rib, watches the news on the TV in the corner.

‘You know everyone keeps asking me what I’ve got coming out next,’ she says.

‘Yeah, they’re asking me too.’

‘I’ve got nothing. Nothing like The Toolin Twins. All these awards we’re getting – people are interested in my work now, I have to be able to follow it up.’

He’s known she’s been feeling the pressure, and he’s glad she’s finally admitting it.

‘You should be happy you made one thing that people like. Some people never get that. The reason you were successful in the first place is because you took your time. You found the right story, you were patient. You listened. Today was a mess, Bo. You were rushing around like a headless chicken. People would rather see something authentic and worthy, than something that’s been thrown together.’

‘Is that why you’re doing Fat Fit Club and Grotesque Bodies?’

The anger bubbles inside him as he tries to remain calm. ‘We’re talking about you, not me.’

‘I’m under pressure, Solomon.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘You can’t tell someone not to feel pressure.’

‘I just did.’

‘Solomon…’ She doesn’t know whether to laugh or be angry.

‘You lost yourself in the forest,’ he says. He hadn’t planned on saying it, it just popped out.

She studies him. ‘Who are you talking to? Me, or yourself?’

‘You, obviously,’ he says, then throws the rib down, it makes a louder sound than he intended, as the bone hits the ceramic plate, and he starts a new one.

Bo folds her arms, studying him for a moment. He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t say a word.

‘We both saw something fascinating in the forest. I jumped into action, you… froze.’

‘I didn’t freeze.’

‘What were you doing there, all that time, while I was at the cottage? Was she there the entire time?’

‘Fuck off, Bo.’

‘Well, it’s a valid question, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. We had sex. In the two minutes I was away from you, we had sex. Up against the tree.’

‘That’s not what I fucking mean and you know it.’

Wasn’t it?

‘I’m trying to figure her out and you’re not giving me anything. You must have had a conversation but you keep ignoring the question. She told you her name. You were alone with her before I got there, I want to know what you talked about…’

He ignores her; the desire to yell at the top of his lungs in front of everybody is too great. He buries the anger, buries it, buries it deep, until a simmer is all that remains. It’s as much as he can manage. He looks at Sky News but doesn’t see it.

Bo eventually leaves the table, and the room.

He could think about what Bo said, analyse it, understand it, look within himself for the answers. He could think about what he said and why, he could think about all of it. But he’s jet-lagged, hungry and pissed off, so instead he concentrates on the news on the TV, starting to hear the words coming from the presenter’s mouth, starting to see the words that scroll by at the bottom of the screen. When he finishes his last rib, he sucks his fingers dry of the sticky sauce and leans back in his chair, feeling bloated and satisfied.

‘Happy now?’ Rachel calls across the empty restaurant.

‘A night’s sleep and I’ll be grand.’ He yawns and stretches. ‘How’s Susie?’

‘A bit pissed off. Weather’s too hot. She can’t sleep. Feet and ankles are swollen up. Baby has a foot in her ribs. Think we’re going home tomorrow?’

Solomon takes a toothpick out of its packet and picks at the meat between his front teeth. ‘Hope so.’

He does want to go home, he knows that much is true. Because he feels spooked. Because he did lose himself in that forest. And Bo saw it happen. And just like Joe wanted to go back to his farmhouse, Solomon wants to return to Dublin, to the Grotesque Bodies show that he despises, to his apartment that constantly smells of curried fish wafting up from his neighbours. He wants normality. He wants to go where he’s used to not thinking about how he’s feeling, where no confusion or analysis is necessary, where he’s not drawn to people he knows he shouldn’t be, or to doing things he knows he shouldn’t do.

‘Are you asleep? Because your eyes are open,’ Rachel says, waving a rib across his eyeline, sending sauce flying on the table and floor. ‘Fuck.’

Bo comes running into the bar, with that look on her face, and her phone in her hand.

‘That was Jimmy – the garda we met earlier. He’s at the Toolin farm. Joe called him to go talk to that girl, but his car hit Mossie on the way up the track. The girl took Mossie into her cottage and she’s doing that crazy voice thing. She’s locked herself in and won’t let anyone near her or let anyone look at Mossie.’

Solomon looks at her in a ‘so what?’ kind of way. It’s all he can summon up, but inside his heart is beating wildly.

Bo fixes him with an intriguing look. ‘She’s asking for you, Sol.’

5

Jimmy is standing by his patrol car, doors open, garda radio on, car directed straight towards the trees at the bat house. It’s still daylight on this summer evening.