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  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—’

  ‘I have to tell it for them,’ Laura says. ‘He can’t hurt them any more.’

  ‘Who can’t?’ Bo asks. ‘The garda? Or your granddad?’

  ‘Both of them. I have to tell the story. For Mum’s sake, and Gaga’s. When they hid me, they hid the truth. They were trying to protect me, but now it’s my turn to protect them.’

  Solomon looks at Laura, tries to read her. Laura looks at Solomon and Bo studies them both, as they do the thing they’ve been doing since the moment they saw each other. This non-verbal communication.

  She looks away to give them space, to give herself space, to disappear from the weirdness of the situation. From the beginning she saw something between them and pushed them together. She pushed them together to get the story, she used Solomon to get closer to Laura. She can’t deny she did it. He wanted to stay away, he knew what he felt, and she pushed him closer to her. She can’t blame either of them. She certainly doesn’t blame herself, but she sees it all for what it is, realistically and balanced. There is something large between them, something that connects them, something that she’s not even sure Solomon sees himself. Solomon, who is so observant of her flaws and so ready to judge others, can’t stand far back enough to see himself.

  Whatever passes between them helps to move a decision along.

  ‘Fine,’ Solomon says, brushing his hand through his long hair. ‘If this is what you want.’ His voice is so soft, so gentle, so understanding, Bo wonders if she’s ever heard him use those tones with her, if he even knows what he sounds like.

  ‘It is,’ Laura says firmly. A nod of the head that sends her hair tumbling down over her shoulders. She takes her seat in the armchair in front of the cream curtains that have been drawn, the lamp gives a light warm glow beside her, an earth green cushion and throw are over the back of the chair, helping to bring out the colour in her eyes even more.

  Solomon sits down, eyes on Laura the entire time. Bo feels like she’s interrupting something here, realises she has felt that way every time they’ve been in the same room together. She watches Solomon from the corner of her eye as he places his headphones on his ears, adjusts the sound again. She thinks of the countless times he has gotten lost in his own world beneath those headphones, either for work or for his own music. He uses sound as his escape, just like Laura. She looks from her to him. She thinks they really have no idea. Or they do and they have been utterly respectful of her the entire time. In a bizarre twist, she wants to hug them both, then squish them together, the idiots.

  Bo turns to Laura. ‘Are you ready?’

  She nods firmly, a determined look in her eyes.

  ‘My granddad used to hurt them both. Gaga and my mum. He drank too much. Gaga says he was unpleasant most of the time, but he was violent when he’d had a drink. Sergeant O’Grady, the local garda, was his best friend. They’d gone to school together, they drank together. Gaga wasn’t from around there, she grew up in Leeds. She was a nanny, moved to Ireland to look after a family. She met Granddad and that was that, she stayed, but she found it hard to settle. She liked to keep to herself. The locals didn’t like that very much, which made her keep to herself even more. Granddad was possessive, he used to pick holes in everything she’d say when she was around people, the way she behaved, and so she decided it was better not to go out any more. It suited her, she said. But then he started getting aggressive. He hit her. She went to hospital with cracked ribs. Eventually things got so bad she went to Granddad’s friend, Garda O’Grady – not to press charges, but to ask him, as Granddad’s friend, to talk to him, help him. He didn’t like what she was saying, told her she must be doing something wrong to make him so angry – he turned it all around on her.

  ‘She would never have gone back to Garda O’Grady again, but for Granddad hitting Mum. She told the guard if he didn’t do something then she would report him. Garda O’Grady told Granddad what she had said. That night Granddad came home from the pub drunk. He hit Gaga, he said he was going to kill Mum. Gaga told her to run and Mum escaped the house and ran off into the woods. Granddad chased her, but he was two sheets to the wind. It was dark, he couldn’t see, he was drunk. Gaga followed him. She watched him trip and hit his head on a rock on the ground. He was begging her for help, to call an ambulance. She couldn’t help him. She said she was frozen. There was the man she had loved, the man who had just beaten her and threatened to kill their daughter, and she sat and watched him drown in a stream. She said that was the best thing that she could have done for both of them. She didn’t hit him, she didn’t kill him, but she didn’t try to save him either. She said she chose to save herself and her daughter instead.’

  Laura lifts her chin. ‘I’m proud of her. I’m proud of what they did, that they were strong enough to defend themselves in the only way they knew how. She had tried talking to his friend, she had tried talking with the law, and it didn’t do any good. Granddad died at his own hands.’

  ‘But why did they choose to keep you a secret?’

  ‘Because Garda O’Grady wouldn’t leave them alone. He dragged Gaga in for questioning almost every day for months. He made her life hell. He spoke so badly about her she barely had any customers left. He even tormented Mum, who was only fourteen years old, he brought her in for questioning too. He accused them both of being murderers. He used to drop by the house at all times of the day and night. He scared them, threatened he’d lock them up for the rest of their lives. They lived in fear for so long, but they stayed where they were.

  ‘When the work dried up, Mum had to look around for another job. That’s when she started working for the Toolin twins. She had an affair with Tom Toolin. I don’t know how long it went on for, but I know that it ended when she became pregnant. She never even told him she had a baby. She was terrified that Garda O’Grady would take me away from her, that he would find a way. Gaga felt the same. So they kept me secret. They didn’t want me to have the same life as they had, they didn’t want him to torment me. They protected me in the best way they could.’

  ‘Do you think now that what they did to you, the life they chose for you, was right?’

  ‘They were doing the best they could. They were protecting me. I could have left the Toolin cottage at any time, but I was happy there. Growing up, I liked to hide, to be hidden. I liked looking at things from outside, from afar. If I hadn’t, I couldn’t immerse myself so much in all of the sounds around me. They all became part of me. I absorbed everything, like a sponge, because there was room for it in my life. Where other people have stresses and strains, endless pressures, I had none. I could be complete.’

  ‘Complete,’ Bo muses. ‘Do you feel complete now that you’ve left the cottage? Now that you’ve become immersed in society?’

  ‘No.’ Laura looks down at her fingers. ‘I don’t hear things as much as I used to. There’s a lot of noise. A lot of muddled …’ She searches for the right word but can’t find it. ‘I feel a bit broken,’ she says sadly.

  38

  Solomon brushes his teeth, taking longer than usual, staring at himself in the mirror but not seeing himself. He looks up to see Bo standing at the door of the ensuite, bag in hand.

  Tears glisten in her eyes.

  He spits out the toothpaste hurriedly and wipes his mouth. He moves back into the bedroom, banging his hip off the corner of an open drawer. He hisses with the pain then searches for something to say to Bo, but nothing comes to mind, nothing appropriate, more a feeling of panic that this moment is here and after everything, does he want it to happen? No relief, just panic, dread. The awful feelings of having to confront, deal, not hide from it. The natural wonder of second-guessing that comes with being confronted by change.

  ‘Jack?’ he asks, clearing his throat, awkwardly.

  ‘No,’ she laughs lightly. ‘Just not you.’

  He’s taken aback by the harshness of it.

  ‘O
h, come on, Sol, it’s hardly shocking to either of us.’

  He rubs his hip absentmindedly.

  ‘You’re in love with her,’ she says quickly. She rubs a single tear away from her cheek. Bo never did crying very well.

  Solomon’s eyes widen.

  ‘Whether you know it or not, you are. I’m never sure with you. What you know and pretend not to, or what you genuinely are blocking out … Sometimes you see everything so clearly and other times you can’t even see yourself, but then, isn’t that all of us?’ She smiles sadly.

  Solomon goes to her and wraps his arms around her, tight. She drops the bag and returns it. He kisses her on the top of her head.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t better for you,’ he whispers.

  ‘Me too,’ she replies, and he pulls away and makes a face. She laughs and picks up her bag. ‘Well, it’s hardly my fault, is it?’

  ‘Never,’ he grins, shaking his head, feeling a little lost, like he’s losing a part of himself with her.

  She stalls at the door, lowers her voice. ‘You were great. We had moments of greatness. Something happened to us when we met her. It’s what you said once: she holds a mirror up to everyone. I didn’t like what I saw of us, not when I saw what you could really be like.’

  He feels his face burn.

  ‘She saved us, I think,’ she adds, eyes tearing up again but trying to stop them. ‘Whoever heard of a saviour that breaks people up? We must have been bad.’

  ‘We weren’t,’ he says defensively. Their relationship may not have been perfect but they had a lot of good times, or at least, mostly good, but not forever good. He won’t see it tarnished. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Not my parents.’ She makes a face, backing away.

  ‘Jack?’ he asks again.

  ‘You need to get over him,’ she says, annoyed.

  ‘So do you,’ he replies, and she rolls her eyes and turns away.

  And despite the situation, Solomon hates Jack even more and wants to hit him even harder.

  ‘I’m helping StarrQuest with Laura’s final performance, you just need to get her to the studio tomorrow. I’ll come back for the rest of my stuff during the week. Stay away from my underwear drawer.’