Lyrebird. Cecelia Ahern

as the bat house, the white paint almost completely gone and the grey concrete dreary amidst all the green. Mossie wanders around in front of the cottage sniffing the ground.

      ‘Who lived here?’ Bo calls.

      ‘Ha?’ he shouts, unable to hear her.

      She studies the cottage. This building has windows. Clean windows.

      Joe and Rachel follow her and turn the corner into the path of the cottage.

      ‘Who lived here?’ Bo repeats.

      ‘My da’s aunt. Long time ago. She moved out, the bats moved in.’ He chuckles again. He closes his eyes while he tries to think of her name. ‘Kitty. We tormented the woman. She used to hit us with a wooden spoon.’

      Bo moves away slightly, closer to the cottage, she studies the area. This house has a vegetable patch beside it, some fruit growing too. There are wildflowers sitting in a tall glass in one of the windows.

      ‘Joe,’ Bo says. ‘Who lives here now?’

      ‘Nobody. Bats maybe,’ he jokes.

      ‘But look.’

      He looks. He takes in all that she has already absorbed. The fruit and vegetable garden, the cottage, the windows that are gleaming, the door painted green, fresher paint than anything else in the vicinity. He’s genuinely confused. She walks around the back. She finds a goat, two chickens wandering around.

      Heart pounding, she calls out. ‘Somebody is living in there, Joe.’

      ‘Intruders? On my land?’ he says angrily, an emotion she has never seen from Joe Toolin or his brother in all her time with them.

      Hands in thick fists by his side, he charges towards the cottage, as fast as he can, and she tries to stop him. Mossie follows him.

      ‘Wait, Joe, wait! Let me get Solomon! Solomon!’ she yells, not wanting to alert the person inside the cottage, but having no choice. ‘Rachel, film this.’ Rachel is already on the case.

      But Joe doesn’t care about her documentary and places his hand on the door knob. He’s about to push open the door but stops himself – he’s a gentleman, after all. He knocks instead.

      Bo looks in the direction of the forest where Solomon disappeared, then back to the cottage. She could kill Solomon right now, she shouldn’t have let him wander off, it was unprofessional of him. She let him leave because she knew he was famished, because as his girlfriend she knows how he becomes. Grumpy, unfocused, ratty. Again, one of the frustrating parts of being romantically linked with a colleague is actually caring when your decisions mean they go hungry. The sound will have to be compromised. At least they’ll have a visual, they can add sound in after.

      ‘Careful, Joe,’ Rachel says. ‘We don’t know who’s in there.’

      There’s no answer at the cottage and so Joe pushes open the door and steps inside. Rachel is behind him, and Bo hurries after.

      ‘What the …?’ Joe stands in the centre of the room, looking around, scratching his head.

      Bo quickly points out singular items she wants Rachel to capture.

      It’s a one-roomed cottage. There’s a single bed by one wall, with a view through one of the small windows beside the vegetable patch. On the other side there’s a natural fire, a cooker, not too dissimilar to the one in Joe’s farmhouse, and an armchair beside shelves of books. The four shelves have been filled to the brim and stacks of books are piled neatly on the floor beside it.

      ‘Books,’ Bo says aloud, wonderingly.

      There are a half-dozen sheepskin rugs on the floor, no doubt to warm the cold stone floor during the desperate winters in a house with no obvious heating other than the fire. There’s sheepskin across the bed, sheepskin on the armchair. A small radio sits alone on a side table.

      It has a distinctly feminine feel. Bo’s not exactly sure why she feels this. She knows it’s biased to base this on the glass of flowers; there’s no scent but it feels feminine, not the dirty rustic feel of Tom and Joe’s farmhouse. This feels different. Cared for, lived in, and there’s a pink cardigan folded over the top rail of a chair. She nudges Rachel.

      ‘Got it already,’ she says, the sweat pumping from her forehead.

      ‘Keep filming, I’ll be back in a minute,’ Bo says, and runs out of the cottage towards the forest.

      ‘Solomon!’ she yells at the top of her voice, knowing there are no neighbours around to disturb. She returns to the clearing in front of the bat house, sees him a short way down the hill in the forest, just standing there, looking at something, as though he’s in a trance. His sound bag is on the ground a few feet away from him, his boom mic leaning up against the tree. The fact that he’s not even working tips her over the edge.

      ‘Solomon!’ she yells, and he finally looks at her. ‘We found a cottage! Someone lives there! Equipment, hurry, move, now!’ She’s not sure if the words she has used make sense or if they’re in the right order, she needs him to move, she needs sound, she needs to capture the story.

      But what Bo hears in response is a sound unlike anything she’s heard before.

       3

      The sound is a bit like a squawk, from a bird, or something not human, but it comes from a human, from the woman standing at the tree.

      Bo runs down into the forest and the blonde woman’s basket goes flying up in the air, its contents fall out on to the forest floor and her eyes are wide in terror.

      ‘It’s okay,’ Solomon says, hands out, wanting to calm her, standing between Bo and the stranger like he’s trying to tame a wild horse. ‘We’re not going to hurt you.’

      ‘Who is that?’ Bo calls.

      ‘Just stay there, Bo,’ Solomon says, annoyed, without turning.

      Of course she ignores him and comes closer. The young woman makes a sound again, another unusual, kind of chirping sound, if a chirp could ever seem like a bark. It’s directed at Bo.

      Bo is gobsmacked, but a smile crawls to her face with fascination.

      ‘I think she wants you to back off,’ Solomon says to her.

      ‘Okay, Doctor Doolittle, but I haven’t done anything wrong,’ she says, annoyed at being told what to do. ‘So I’m not leaving.’

      ‘Well then just don’t come any closer,’ Solomon says.

      ‘Sol!’ she says, looking at him with shock.

      ‘Hey, hey, it’s okay!’ he says to the girl, slowly moving a little closer, getting on his hands and knees to pick up the flowers and herbs from the ground. He places them in her basket and holds it out to her. She stops her chirping but is clearly in distress, looking from Solomon to Bo, eyes wide and fearful.

      ‘My name is Bo Healy. I’m a filmmaker and we’re here with Joe Toolin’s permission.’ She holds out her hand.

      The blonde woman looks at her hand and makes a series of more distressed sounds, none of them words.

      ‘Oh my God.’ Bo looks at Solomon, wide-eyed, taking out her phone and calling Rachel. ‘Rachel, come up to the clearing, quickly. I need the camera.’ She hangs up. ‘Record this,’ she mouths to Solomon, signalling his equipment with her eyes, afraid to move the rest of her body.

      The young woman is firing off one bizarre sound after the next and it is the strangest thing Solomon has ever witnessed. It doesn’t sound like it’s coming from her voice box, it’s like a recording. He’s so stunned and fascinated he can’t stop watching her,