When the sun began to sink, Sylvia went back to her own flat, and Bonnie remained in the backyard watching the warm light go out of the evening, watching the sky whiten and then faintly purple, like a wash of watercolour, like Dulux Violet White. The trees turned black and looked, thought Bonnie, like something designed by Tim Burton. Her skin cooled. She felt comfortable, and it was an effort to get out of the deckchair and into her bed, and then when she was in bed she could not sleep. She put her coat on over her nightie and walked to the all-night garage, where she bought a bar of chocolate, and opened it on the way home. She did not see a soul apart from the cashier who dealt with her through the night hatch; and a strange man, tall and dark in the darkness, waiting outside her house, holding a briefcase. She almost said to him, ‘Are you looking for me?’ But before she had swallowed her chocolate, the sound of an approaching bus made her turn around. The last bus of the night drew to a squealing halt at the stop outside the house. The man got on and the bus took him away.
9
At the Lab, Chi was increasingly absent. She had begun to miss days and then whole weeks. ‘Where’s Chichi?’ Mr Carr would say. ‘Why isn’t Chichi here?’ Bonnie did not know why, and Mr Carr would say, ‘Fat lot of use you are.’ Bonnie was given Chi’s work to do, alongside her own, although she would not be paid for doing both. She cleaned Chi’s offices, and the canteen, on whose herringbone parquet floor she had to use the buffer, a machine that Bonnie found frightening: it seemed to have the potential waywardness of a shopping trolley, as well as a surprisingly powerful motor.
When Chi reappeared after a few days or a week or more, she said that she had been ill, but she received warnings, given by Mr Carr behind closed doors. Bonnie had also had warnings, both for being late and sometimes for not turning up. ‘I thought you were the reliable one, Chichi,’ said Mr Carr, shaking his head in disappointment at seeing Chi arrive late again. ‘But now,’ he said, cocking his thumb towards Bonnie, ‘you’re worse than her.’
One Monday, Chi was gone and someone else was there in her place. The new worker introduced herself to Bonnie as Fiona, although Mr Carr called her Chichi.
Fiona was small and slim, with dark hair so thick that it might have been a wig. Dressed all in black, wearing leggings and trainers, she looked like she was ready to run, or like she could sink into the shadows and just disappear.
On Fiona’s first day, while she and Bonnie were in the staff room and Bonnie was reading the terms and conditions on the back of a packet of sweets, Fiona suddenly said, ‘Dare,’ making Bonnie look up. ‘I dare you,’ said Fiona, and she glanced around the room. Her gaze settled on Mr Carr’s coat, a padded jacket hanging on a nearby hook. ‘I dare you,’ she said, ‘to spit in Mr Carr’s coat pocket.’
‘What?’ said Bonnie.
‘You heard me,’ said Fiona.
Bonnie looked at Mr Carr’s coat; she looked at the pocket. This was a game that had always made Bonnie nervous. At school, it had been Truth, Dare, Double Dare, Love, Kiss or Promise, although, even then, it had seemed mostly to be Dare, or Double Dare which was worse. Once, for a Double Dare, Bonnie had climbed up onto the roof of the sports hut, from which she had been dared to jump. Bonnie had gone to the nearest edge and stood there, looking down, and then someone had shouted up to her and she had jumped. Landing awkwardly on a hard patch of ground, she had twisted her ankle. The teacher on duty in the playground had taken one look at Bonnie and told her that she was a stupid girl. Bonnie had been taken to see the school nurse, who sat Bonnie down, asked her where she had hurt herself and what had happened, tended to the injury and called her a very stupid girl. ‘Erica dared me to do it,’ said Bonnie. The nurse peered over her half-moon spectacles. ‘And if Erica dared you to jump off a skyscraper,’ said the nurse, ‘would you do it?’ Bonnie pictured herself standing on the roof of a skyscraper, her toes right up against a concrete edge, or hanging over it, like someone about to dive into a swimming pool, her head tipped forward to see the ground far below, gravity compelling her. Dare. In the nurse’s room, Bonnie felt a twinge in her ankle and closed her eyes. At home time, her mother was waiting for her at the school gates. As she helped Bonnie into the car, she said, ‘You are a stupid girl.’
Bonnie stood up and went over to where Mr Carr’s coat was hanging up, and touched the pocket.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ said Mr Carr, coming into the room.
‘Nothing,’ said Bonnie, taking her fingers away from his pocket, stepping away from his coat.
Mr Carr looked at her, came over and looked in the pocket of his coat. He narrowed his eyes at her, came very close and said quietly, ‘Whatever you’re thinking, don’t.’ He looked at his watch. ‘What are you standing around in here for?’ he said. ‘You’re slack, do you know that? You ought to have started work five minutes ago.’
Bonnie stood rooted to the spot, waiting for him to finish.
Mr Carr clicked his fingers in her face. ‘Chop chop,’ he said. ‘When I say jump, you jump.’
Bonnie went off to her corridors, and Fiona made her way to the offices.
Dare was Fiona’s favourite game. At any moment, Fiona might say, ‘Dare.’ She might say it as soon as Bonnie came in through the gates, or she might say it during a pause in conversation in the staff room, or sometimes entire weeks would go by and then she would say it: ‘Dare,’ as if they were constantly in the game; as if they were only ever resting in between bouts. With no preamble at all, she would say, ‘Dare,’ and it was, thought Bonnie, like a posthypnotic cue; her new friend would say, ‘Dare,’ and Bonnie would do what she said, or at least she would attempt to.
‘Dare,’ said Fiona, and Bonnie might have to get something out of the vending machine without paying for it, or she would have to get the security guard on the gate to agree to a date. Bonnie hated doing these dares, and yet, when dared, she could not resist, although ultimately she always failed; she never seemed to have the knack for getting free stuff out of the machine or whatever it was.
‘I dare you,’ said Fiona, one breezy Friday evening, ‘to get into one of the labs and let an animal out of its cage.’ Bonnie hated to think about those cages, which she had never seen but which she knew must exist inside the laboratories behind the double doors. She was tempted.
She began her shift, fetching and filling a bucket and carrying it carefully to her starting point. She moved slowly down the long corridor, mopping away the day’s footprints. When she came to the first set of double doors, she paused. She did not know who might be in there. She never saw anyone around that late in the day, apart from her own cleaning team, and the security guard on the gate, reading his paper.
Taking one hand off the mop, she reached out and touched the door. She did not know what she might find behind it. She thought about films she had seen, like 28 Days Later in which the release of infected chimps caused the spread of a highly contagious virus. She was afraid of what she might unleash. She pushed against the door but it did not open; she pushed a little bit harder but it appeared to be locked. She continued down the corridor, mopping from side to side with the warm, bleach-scented water, pausing occasionally to refresh and wring the mop, glancing again at the shut-tight doors behind her.
Back in the staff room at the end of the shift, Fiona was sitting drinking a can of Coca-Cola from the vending machine. She raised her eyebrows at Bonnie, and the eyebrows said, Did you do it?