Laura sits in a corner of the room in the garda station, wrapped in a blanket. Between her hands she holds a mug of hot tea, which has helped to calm her. She waits for somebody to pick her up, she wouldn’t give Solomon or Bo’s name, she doesn’t want them to see her like this, or know anything about what has happened. Her pride has been bruised. She wanted to prove that she could be okay without them and she failed.
The gardai work around her; opening and closing the hatch to stamp passport forms, and driving licences and whatever else people need. Lots of paperwork; the behind-the-scenes of keeping the law. She feels like she is in a safe area, no nasty robbers being dragged into the cells. If her mum and Gaga knew about this they would be terrified, their worst fears realised, but there’s no sense of terror here, it’s calm. Laura thinks of Gaga and hears the sound of the carving knife being sharpened. Not an appropriate sound to make in a police station; heads turn. Maybe that’s why she does it, because she’s not supposed to. The nerves have gotten to her, or she wants to rebel, she wants to be different, to be seen? These are all the questions Bo asked her when they were alone. Laura thinks about it now, in a way that she never has before, she’s never had to analyse herself so much. She’s not sure why she makes the sounds she makes, not always anyway, sometimes it makes perfect sense. But now, making knife-sharpening sounds in a police station, that’s not smart. When she’s relaxed on the mountain that makes sense, reading a book and a robin is building a nest above her. She can’t help but join in with their sounds then.
‘A robin,’ the male garda says suddenly. ‘I recognise that one.’
‘Didn’t know you knew anything about birds, Derek.’
‘We have a family of them in our back garden.’ He spins around in his chair to talk to his colleague. ‘The daddy bird is vicious enough.’
‘They’re very territorial,’ Laura says, remembering.
‘That’s it,’ he says, dropping the pen to the table. ‘Those robins would win in a fight against our dog any day. Daisy is terrified of them.’
‘I’d say Daisy wouldn’t win in a fight against anyone,’ his colleague says, still rifling through papers. ‘With a name like Daisy.’
The others laugh.
As everybody relaxes, the sound of their laughter triggers something. She feels the beat of the music from the nightclub, in her heart.
Rude stupid bitch. The girl had thought Laura was blocking her ears to avoid a conversation with her, when it was because the sound of the hand-drier had given her a fright. It was all a misunderstanding.
Misophonia, Bo had explained to her one day. People with misophonia hate certain noises, termed trigger sounds, and respond with stress, anger, irritation and in extreme cases, violent rage. Laura hadn’t felt that it applied to her, but perhaps Bo was right? She thinks of the moment again.
The girls laughing in the toilet, camera phones held up. The man with his hand around her waist, bringing her somewhere, saying ssh in her ear. The kind girl whispering ssh in her ear, holding her hair, rubbing her back.
No, Laura stops. She hadn’t reacted violently, she had merely blocked her ears.
Hypersensitive to sounds, Bo had said to her another time.
The garda with the family of robins in his garden rolls over to her on his chair on wheels, he looks at her with a concerned fatherly face. ‘If there’s anything you need to share about last night, you can tell us.’
She swallows. She shudders, then shakes her head.
A garda she hasn’t seen before arrives to start his shift and drops a tabloid newspaper down on the desk. Laura sees a photograph of herself on the front page. The headline reads DRUNK BIRD. She starts to panic. He’s startled, had no idea the Lyrebird is in his station. The kind guard who found her covers up the newspaper and tries to calm her again.
Laura can barely hear her words through her own panicked sounds; the airplane, Mossie’s snarl, the bats at night, city sirens, camera shutter, the sound of the lyrebird’s cage, the airplane seatbelt clicking, toilets flushing, high heels on tiles, the noisy hand-driers. Everything meshes in her head.
Despite the kindness from the gardai she should have known it wouldn’t stay so peaceful for long. Somehow the press discover she’s at the station. They’re outside and waiting for her to appear. Bianca and Michael arrive. Michael stays outside, clearing a route for Laura to the blacked-out SUV. Laura didn’t want to contact Solomon and Bo, Bianca had been the only person she could think of.
‘Are you okay?’ Bianca asks with concern as Laura is brought out to reception.
Laura whimpers, Mossie’s dying sounds, the fallen hare.
‘She’s had a rough night,’ the kind garda says. ‘She needs a rest.’
‘Is the girl pressing charges, is she in trouble?’ Bianca asks.
‘We haven’t had anybody here pressing charges,’ the garda says.
Bianca turns to Laura. ‘There was a girl in the toilets of the nightclub, she says you pushed her, assaulted her. Curtis needs to know. They have to release a statement to the press.’