Sylvia looked at her watch. ‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘Besides, it’s a Saturday evening. You’ll be off out somewhere, I expect.’
‘I’ll see you out,’ said Bonnie, and she made her way through to the kitchen. ‘There are other Bonnies,’ she said, ‘as well as Bonnie Parker and My Bonnie lies over the ocean. There’s Bonnie Tyler, and Bonnie Langford, and Bonnie Greer.’ She was at the back door before she realised that Sylvia was not behind her, and it was if Bonnie were the one leaving somebody else’s house. Sylvia came into the kitchen a moment later, carrying the dirty mugs that Bonnie had left behind on the carpet. ‘There are other Bonnies,’ said Bonnie.
‘Of course,’ said Sylvia. ‘There aren’t very many of you though, are there? The name’s not popular these days. It’s gone out of fashion. You’re an endangered species.’ She put the mugs down on the side, finding a space near the sink. ‘You could do with some proper teacups,’ she said. ‘Thin china cups. It makes the tea taste better.’
At the door, Sylvia paused and said to Bonnie, ‘You’re afraid of your own story. But you don’t need to worry about what happens at the end. All you need to know is: What happens next?’
After Sylvia had gone, Bonnie smoked her cigarette in the doorway and then locked up. She got herself some supper to take to bed: some warm milk, which would help her to sleep, and some cheese, which would give her weird dreams. On her way through to the bedroom, she stopped off in the lounge to take her Seatown story out of the drawer. She wondered about her anxiety, her obsession with the fragility of limbs. She did remember being frightened of a busker whose legs could bend the wrong way, and having a nightmare after seeing a dog that had wheels instead of back legs. She thought about her story and how it might end. She thought, What happens next? She remembered something that Sylvia had said to her: ‘In your writing, you keep returning to the seaside.’ Had Sylvia seen her other unfinished stories? Bonnie looked in the drawer but all her printouts were there, including, in fact, her dissertation notes.
Bonnie went through to her bedroom, which was dark, and into which a blade of light was coming beneath the locked door. She thought of the bunch of keys attached to the belt loop of Sylvia’s skirt. She thought about moving the furniture, pushing the wardrobe or the bed in front of the door. But whatever she did was likely to make no difference at all, she realised, because Sylvia probably still had her own key to the back door.
II
7
Leaving behind the blank — though perhaps not entirely blank — piece of paper, Susan went downstairs, to the landlady’s rooms on the next landing. After knocking on the solid wooden door, she waited. After a minute, the landlady came to the door wearing an apron that said, ‘I’M THE BOSS!’ She was a strikingly tall woman, and under her apron she was smartly dressed, in an outfit that matched her eyeshadow and complemented the colour of her eyes, which were the shifting blue-grey-green of the sea and reminded Susan of childhood beach holidays and almost drowning.
‘Did you come up to my room just now?’ asked Susan. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t hear anyone knocking. I was sleeping.’
‘No,’ said the landlady. ‘I’ve not been up to your room today. I’ve been baking.’
‘Someone’s been up to my room,’ said Susan.
‘I don’t think so,’ said the landlady. ‘You know the pub’s closed. It’s only you and me here today.’
‘Somebody put something under my door,’ said Susan.
‘Put what under your door?’ asked the landlady.
‘A piece of paper,’ said Susan. ‘I assumed it was a note for me.’
‘What does it say?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Susan. ‘I’m not sure it says anything.’
The landlady gave her a strange look. ‘Where is this note?’ she asked.
‘I left it in my room,’ said Susan.
‘I’ll come and have a look,’ said the landlady.
A beeping sound came from the kitchen and the landlady held up a finger to Susan: Wait. She went back into her kitchen and opened the oven door. Susan caught the edge of a baking smell that made her mouth water. A moment later, the beeping sound was turned off and the landlady came out again still wearing her ‘I’M THE BOSS!’ apron. ‘Right,’ she said, touching Susan’s elbow to steer her towards the stairs. ‘Show me this piece of paper.’
She followed Susan up the stairs and into her room, where Susan looked for the piece of paper on the desk by the door. There was some writing paper on the desk, but not that same scrap. She looked on the floor, and on the bedside table, and on and in the bed. ‘It was here,’ she said. ‘But now I can’t see it.’
‘I’m sure it will turn up,’ said the landlady.
The beeping sound came again, up the stairs or through the floorboards, and Susan’s mouth watered. ‘That will be my scones,’ said the landlady. ‘Come with me.’ Susan locked the door to her room and followed the landlady back down the stairs. ‘Wait there,’ said the landlady. Susan waited on the landing. From there, and indeed from outside her own room, she could see over the banister to the ground floor, the hardwood staircase spiralling down, framing the cramped entrance hall, the floor tiles off-white with occasional squares of red. When Susan looked at it from the top floor, she thought of the life nets or jumping sheets that firefighters used, or once used, and she felt the pull of the drop.
The landlady came back with a few hot scones around which she was wrapping a clean tea towel. ‘Go and get some fresh air,’ she said.
Susan headed down the stairs and went outside. Her bundle of scones wrapped in a checked tea towel made her feel like a runaway setting out for London, like Oliver Twist running away from the undertaker’s with a crust of bread and a coarse shirt and a penny tied up in a handkerchief. She sat down on a bench in front of the pub. There were very few people around — she could see a couple at the seashore with a toddler on reins, and a bald man coming along the esplanade. The bald man seemed to say something to the family, and the couple turned around and looked at him but did not reply. It was late in the day, as well as late in the year, and there was not much light left. Susan opened up the tea towel and began to eat one of the scones, which was surprisingly dense. She was not looking at the bald man when he stopped just in front of her and leaned against the railings in between Susan and the sea. With her mouth full of scone, she became aware of him standing there, staring at her. His arms, holding on to the railings behind him, were bent at an odd, double-jointed angle. ‘Jump!’ he said, and Susan looked right at him. She saw the smooth, flat space between his unblinking eyes and his unsmiling mouth, and saw that he was not looking at her after all; those eyes were only tattoos on the back of his head, and the thin, wide mouth was a crease in the skin at the base of his skull. He was facing the sea; and as commanded, a dog that had been hidden from Susan’s view by the sea wall jumped up from the beach onto the esplanade, and the man let go of the railings and turned away from the beach. He did not look at her, but the dog did; the dog saw her. The man strolled on down the esplanade, with the dog trotting along at his heels. From her place on the bench, Susan watched him go, and the tattooed eyes in the back of his head stared unblinkingly back at her.