‘All right,’ said Sylvia. ‘And when you compete,’ she said to Bonnie’s mother, ‘you have some success?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Bonnie’s father. ‘We had to buy a whole new cabinet for all Pearl’s trophies. It’s in pride of place in the spare room. That’s your old room, Bonnie.’
Bonnie had not yet managed to attract the attention of a waiter, and in the end, her mother turned her head as a waiter came by and she stopped him. ‘My daughter is ready to order now,’ she said, and as Bonnie and Sylvia ordered their food, the rest of the meals came out and the three of them tucked in.
Bonnie’s father, eyeing Fiona’s progress, said, ‘You eat a lot for a little girl.’
‘I’m not a little girl,’ said Fiona.
‘You are,’ he said. He turned to Bonnie’s mother and said, ‘Isn’t she? Whereas our Bonnie’s always been a big girl.’
‘She’s hardly a girl,’ said Fiona. ‘She’s thirty years old.’
‘That’s right,’ he said, turning to Bonnie. ‘Tick tock.’
He picked up the bottle of table wine and filled Bonnie’s mother’s glass, and then Sylvia’s, and then Fiona’s. Bonnie poured herself a glass of water.
‘Aren’t you having wine?’ asked Sylvia.
‘I don’t drink,’ said Bonnie.
‘Not even on your birthday?’ said Sylvia.
‘I prefer not to,’ said Bonnie.
‘My mother doesn’t drink,’ said Fiona. ‘She’s one of these high-powered people who doesn’t like to lose control.’ They all looked at Bonnie, whose hair, though dry, was still tangled, and whose dress looked like cats had been sitting on it, even though she did not have a cat.
‘Not even one little glass?’ asked Sylvia. ‘Just a sip?’
Bonnie shook her head and reached for her water.
‘Well,’ said Sylvia, ‘many happy returns anyway,’ and the four of them touched their wine glasses desultorily against Bonnie’s water glass.
Sylvia’s dinner arrived, though not Bonnie’s, and when the waiter came back to take away the empty plates, Bonnie’s mother asked him where Bonnie’s dinner had got to. The waiter went to check and after a while he returned to say that there had been some mistake and that no other order had gone through to the kitchen. The order was placed again. ‘And the bill, please,’ said Bonnie’s father.
When the waiter had dealt with the bill and had gone away again, Sylvia said to Bonnie’s parents, ‘I’ve been reading some of Bonnie’s writing.’
‘It’s about time she gave that up,’ said her father. ‘I’ve told her, writing is a young man’s game. A writer will always do his best work before he’s thirty, and after that it’s just so much hogwash.’
‘One of Bonnie’s stories,’ said Sylvia, ‘touches on a phase she went through of jumping off the ends of piers, in Blackpool and Bognor Regis and Belgium.’
Bonnie’s father looked at Bonnie and shook his head in astonishment, as if, once again, she stood dripping and bedraggled before him. ‘She took a long walk off a short pier,’ he said. He tapped his temple with his index finger and said to Sylvia, ‘She hasn’t got a bit of sense.’
‘It’s just as well the tide was in,’ said Bonnie’s mother, ‘otherwise she’d have broken her legs, if she was lucky.’
‘And she used to sleepwalk,’ mentioned Sylvia, ‘and nearly went out of a window?’
‘She’s like a bloody lemming,’ said Bonnie’s father.
‘Don’t you ever feel,’ said Bonnie, ‘when you’re up high—’
‘Don’t mumble,’ said Sylvia.
‘She does mumble, doesn’t she?’ said Bonnie’s mother.
‘When you’re up high,’ said Bonnie, ‘don’t you ever feel an urge to jump? Don’t you ever feel that you might not be able to stop yourself?’
Sylvia smiled, and Bonnie’s father touched his fingertip to his temple again.
‘Freud wrote about the death drive,’ said Sylvia, ‘a death instinct, leading organic life back into the inanimate state.’
‘What do you do for a living, Sylvia?’ asked Bonnie’s mother.
‘I’m just a landlady,’ said Sylvia, ‘now.’
Bonnie’s mother ate a mint and said, ‘Well, we could go if it wasn’t for Bonnie’s dinner.’
They talked a little longer, and finally Bonnie’s dinner arrived. ‘Eat up,’ said her father, and her mother started putting on her coat. Bonnie ate her chips and drank her water while everyone waited, and then her father said, ‘All right, let’s go.’
Bonnie’s mother handed Bonnie a mint and said, ‘Have one of these. It will help with your breath.’
Outside the restaurant, Bonnie’s parents said their goodbyes and drove home, and Sylvia said to Fiona, ‘Whereabouts do you live?’ but Fiona was evasive. She went one way — ‘Maybe see you on Monday,’ she said — while Bonnie and Sylvia went the other.
It had grown unexpectedly dark while they had been inside. They walked home in comfortable silence until, as they passed the end of Waterside Close, Sylvia cleared her throat and said, ‘Do you have any plans for the summer? Are you going away anywhere?’
‘I’d like to go somewhere,’ said Bonnie. ‘A few years ago, I stayed in an Ibis hotel and that was really nice. Apparently they have them abroad too. I’d like to try one of those sometime.’
‘They’re all the same, you know,’ said Sylvia. ‘You could be anywhere.’
‘They’re not exactly the same,’ said Bonnie.
‘There’s a hotel in Japan,’ said Sylvia, ‘whose reception desk is staffed by a team of identical robots that look completely real.’
‘Really?’ said Bonnie. ‘You wouldn’t know they were robots?’
‘Well,’ said Sylvia, ‘maybe you’d know, but they are uncannily lifelike, like the Stepford Wives.’
‘Presumably they can only do what they’ve been programmed to do?’ said Bonnie.
‘I imagine so,’ said Sylvia.
‘You couldn’t order them to kill all humans.’
‘You could try, but I doubt they’d do it,’ said Sylvia. ‘You could probably order a sandwich.’
‘You can do that at an Ibis as well,’ said Bonnie. ‘There’s a twenty-four-hour snack service.’
‘Have you seen the Ancient Egyptian images,’ asked Sylvia, ‘of a man with the head of an ibis, writing? It was the Egyptians,’ she added, ‘who reared ibises specifically for sacrificial purposes.’
‘And Comfort Inns,’ said Bonnie. ‘I would try them too.’
‘Who do you go on holiday with?’ asked Sylvia.
‘I used to go with my mum and dad,’ said Bonnie, ‘but eventually they decided it was time I started going away with my friends. I haven’t been on holiday for a while. I can’t really afford it anyway.’
‘I haven’t been away for years,’ said Sylvia. ‘We should go somewhere together. We could go to Devon.’
‘That would be really nice,’ said Bonnie, turning and looking at Sylvia as they walked along. ‘I’d really like that. There’s an Ibis in Devon.’
‘Leave it with me,’ said Sylvia. ‘I’ll look into it.’
‘I’d need a ground-floor room,’ said Bonnie.
They were almost home when Bonnie suddenly said, ‘Oh, I completely forgot that you’d met Mum before. You told me you used to know her. I would have mentioned it to her if I’d thought. You didn’t say anything about it in the restaurant. And I don’t think she recognised you.’
‘No,’ said Sylvia. ‘I don’t think she did.’
They turned onto their street, and Bonnie thought that her mother might not like the idea of her walking the length of Slash Lane in the dark, but at least, she thought, as she passed beneath the broken street lamps, she was with a friend.