Lyrebird. Cecelia Ahern

in her hands, closely followed by Joe.

      ‘What the hell is going on down there?’ Rachel shouts, coming to an abrupt halt as she sees with her own eyes.

      The young woman turns to Rachel and starts making the sound of a car alarm. Solomon looks at what’s happening from her perspective, surrounded by three people, strangers in the forest, she must feel completely trapped. He can’t bring himself to record this. It’s not right.

      Bo senses his hesitancy and sighs. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she snaps. She does what she should have done at the outset had she thought of it at the time, and films the unfolding scene with her phone.

      Joe joins them.

      The blonde woman stops making her sounds, for a moment she looks at Joe and she seems relieved.

      ‘Who are you?’ Joe shouts, half hidden by a tree. The fear is obvious in his voice. ‘What are you doing on my land?’

      She panics again, backing away through the trees.

      Solomon watches them all. Bo is filming on her phone, Rachel pointing the camera at her, Joe a fierce face on him.

      Solomon is exhausted, he needs to eat.

      ‘Stop!’ he yells and everybody goes silent. ‘You’re frightening her. Everybody step away. Let her go.’

      She stares at him.

      ‘You’re free to go.’

      She keeps looking at him. Those green eyes on him.

      ‘I don’t think she understands,’ Bo says, still filming.

      ‘Of course she understands,’ Solomon snaps.

      ‘I don’t think she can speak … words. What’s your name?’ Bo asks.

      The young woman ignores the question and continues to look at Solomon.

      ‘Her name is Laura,’ he says.

      Mossie suddenly comes racing from the direction of the bat house, towards the forest, he’s barking manically, protecting his land from the intruder. But instead of stopping by Joe he continues into the forest and heads straight for Laura.

      ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, call him off her, Joe,’ Solomon says fearfully, afraid he’ll take a chunk out of her.

      But Mossie stops right at her feet, circles her excitedly, jumping up and down for her attention, licking her hand.

      She rubs him – clearly the two of them are no strangers – as she nervously keeps her eye on everyone around her. She holds her hand out to Solomon and he looks at her, confused, thinking she wants to hold his hand. He reaches out his hand and then she smiles and looks down at the basket.

      ‘The basket, Sol,’ Bo says.

      Embarrassed, he hands it to her.

      Laura sets off with Mossie in tow, trying to avoid everyone. She is tentative at first. As she passes Bo, she growls, a perfect imitation of a dog growl so real it sounds like a recording, or as though it has come from Mossie. Laura examines Joe carefully and as soon as she’s clear of them she runs up through the forest, past the bat house in the direction of the cottage.

      ‘Did you get that?’ Bo asks Rachel.

      ‘Yep.’ She removes the camera from her shoulder, and wipes the perspiration from her forehead. ‘I got the blonde woman barking at you.’

      ‘Where did she go?’ Solomon asks.

      ‘There’s a cottage around the back of the bat house,’ Rachel explains. Bo is too busy reviewing her video footage to see if she captured the moment.

      ‘Do you know her?’ Solomon asks Joe, completely confused as to what happened but feeling the adrenaline running through his body and a light tremble within him.

      ‘She’s trespassing on private property,’ he huffs, the anger steaming off him.

      ‘Do you think Tom knew about her?’ Bo asks.

      That question stumps him. His face goes from certainty, to confusion, to anger, betrayal, to disbelief once again. Then he’s sad. If his brother did know about this young woman living in the cottage on their land, then he was keeping it from him. The brothers with no secrets from each other, it turns out, had one very big one.

       4

      ‘There’s only one way of finding the answers,’ Bo says, rolling up the sleeves of her black blouse to reveal her bronzed skin, as the sun continues to beat down overhead. ‘We have to talk to the girl.’

      ‘She’s not a girl. She’s a woman, and her name is Laura,’ Solomon says, not sure where the anger is coming from. ‘And I seriously doubt she’ll want to talk to us now after we scared the shit out of her.’

      ‘I didn’t know she was … that she had a … disability,’ Bo defends herself.

      ‘Disability?’ Solomon splutters.

      ‘Oh, come on, what’s the PC term?’ Bo searches. ‘Developmentally delayed, developmentally disabled, unsophisticated. Any of those please you? You know what I mean, I didn’t realise.’

      ‘Well, she ain’t exactly normal,’ Rachel says, sitting down on a rock, exhausted and sweating.

      ‘Whatever the word for her, there’s clearly something wrong with her, Solomon,’ Bo says, pushing her hair off her face and redoing the short ponytail in her hair, the excitement bursting from her. ‘If I’d known that, I would have approached her differently. Did you two talk? Apart from her telling you her name. You were there a while.’

      ‘I think what happens from here is Joe’s decision. It’s his land,’ Solomon says, ignoring Bo’s interview, his stomach grumbling.

      Bo throws him an annoyed look.

      Joe shuffles around, clearly very uncomfortable with this chain of events. Joe likes routine, for everything to remain the same. Already his day has been very stressful and emotional. ‘I want Mossie back,’ he says finally. ‘And she shouldn’t be living on my land.’

      ‘Squatters laws are tricky,’ Rachel says. ‘Friend of mine went through it. You have to get a court order to remove them.’

      ‘Did your friends get rid of the squatter?’ Solomon asks.

      ‘My friend was the squatter,’ Rachel replies.

      Despite his frustration with what’s going on, Solomon smirks.

      ‘She has no right keeping my dog. I’m getting Mossie,’ Joe says, adjusting his cap and marching off toward the cottage.

      ‘Follow him,’ Bo says quickly, picking up Rachel’s camera and handing it to her, ignoring the exhausted glare. But as she’s doing that Joe runs out of steam.

      ‘Maybe it’s better a woman talks to her.’

      ‘Don’t look at me,’ Rachel warns Bo.

      Apart from his mother, Bo, Rachel and Bridget, Joe hasn’t been around many women, and has rarely spoken to a woman for most of his life. Rachel is easy with all people but it took him some adjustments to get used to her, particularly as she’s not the kind of woman he’s used to; a woman married to another woman was a fact that boggled his mind on learning it. Joe doesn’t consider Bridget a woman, he doesn’t really consider her at all; and Bo is still a cause for some awkwardness because of her own social abilities, or lack thereof. Having to talk to another new woman would flummox him. Especially one so odd, who requires care, thought and understanding. The four go to the cottage, their movements less charged and aggressive than before.

      Bo