‘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.’