Laura giggles. ‘Thanks Alan.’
He’s reluctant to leave her at Solomon’s apartment block, but Laura convinces him she’s okay, fooling him by standing at the door and pretending to buzz his intercom. She watches him drive away, back to the contestants’ house, no doubt practising his act with an invisible Mabel in the car.
As she stands beneath the balcony, she imagines she can hear Solomon’s guitar playing. She hopes to be able to summon it herself, but there’s nothing, the curtain is still drawn over her vocal cords. She looks up at the window of the bedroom she slept in with his rails of shirts and T-shirts. She loved the smell and feel of his things around her, his music equipment, his guitar in the corner of the room, his recording equipment. She thinks of Bo and Solomon making love and this twists her heart. She needs to stay away from him, move on. It’s not their apartment that she’s here to visit.
She hears the chirping in her head again, the sound that woke her from her nightmare. The restaurant beneath the apartments has left all the tables and chairs outside; they’re stacked up in the corner against the glass. She gets an idea. She moves as quietly as possible, knowing how clearly she could hear everything outside when she was in the spare bedroom. She is more sensitive to sounds than most; Solomon is the only other person she’s ever met who hears things as she does. His ears have been finely honed either from his music days, or his sound recording days, trained to listen for that something extra. She stacks the chairs four high and struggles to climb on them. Too wobbly and not high enough. She half lifts, half pulls a table closer to the balcony and removes some chairs from the stack and lifts them onto the table. Dragging the table has made a noise and she looks up to check the apartments. All lights are off, clear balconies, no heads hanging out the windows. She uses one chair to climb on to the table. She holds on to the café window while climbing on to the stacked chairs. She’s high enough to reach the balcony, but it’s incredibly wobbly under her weight. She takes a chance and leans over and grabs the rail. She holds on tight and places one foot on the floor of the balcony, another staying on the wobbling stack of chairs. Finally, she takes a deep breath and heaves her body to the balcony so that she is standing on the outside of the railing. As she pushes against the stack of chairs, they topple off the table and fall to the ground, which makes an enormous crash that reverberates around the canal. Heart pounding, she sees lights go on, hears windows open, and quickly climbs over the balcony rail and ducks down, back against the wall. She catches her breath and hopes nobody will see her, huddled in the dark. She may be safe now, but getting down will be impossible now that she’s stupidly knocked over the stack of chairs.
She hears the chirping again and looks for the cage. The floor of the balcony is decorated with toy boxes, protecting the toys inside from the elements, the boy’s mother using every available space in her small apartment for her child. Laura’s ready to free the bird. After listening to his chirping for so long and watching him from Solomon and Bo’s balcony, she still can’t speak bird, but during her time mimicking the sounds she felt it was saying something. I’m trapped. Get me out. But her smile fades as she searches for the cage. It’s gone.
She starts to cry, feeling useless, helpless, pathetic.
The lights suddenly go on in the apartment and she panics, knowing that to jump from the balcony to the table would be dangerous. The table would topple under her weight, she’d end up on the ground. Should she risk it?
The curtain slides open and a woman’s face appears. When she sees Laura, she starts screaming. In Polish. Laura stands up and holds out her hands to calm her.
‘It’s okay,’ Laura says, knowing the woman can’t hear her, and even if she could, she might not understand English. ‘Please …’
The lights in Solomon’s apartment go on.
Laura panics. He can’t find her here, not like this. The balcony door slides open and Solomon steps out sleepily. He’s not wearing a top and his tracksuit bottoms sit dangerously low on his hips. Despite her panic, Laura can’t help but take him in. He rubs his eyes as if he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.
‘Laura?’
She starts to cry again, feeling ridiculous, pathetic, mortified and relieved to see him again. All those feelings, all at the same time.
Solomon bangs on the door. He can hear Katja inside, screaming, and a child howling. She’s not answering the door, but she sounds like she’s talking to someone in the apartment. She’s shrieking and crying, the little boy is crying. Others have stepped out of their apartments into the corridor and glare sleepily at Solomon as he bangs on the door, as if this is all his fault. He ignores them. His heart pounds, he needs to get inside.