A crowd had gathered on the other side of the biome. Murmurs and whispers grew louder, like the buzzing of bees. People raised phones cupped in the palms of their hands, snapping photos by blinking their eyes.

Evan and Naomi pushed their way to the front. A few edged away from Naomi when they recognised her as Valerie Black’s shadow. She felt their eyes on her as she took in the ugly, red graffiti scrawled across the biome’s smooth exterior.

VAL BLACK = FRIGID CLIMATE CUNT

In another context, she would have laughed. Naomi stared at it, unblinking. The intent of this was malice, belittlement. She wanted to jerk back from the force of it. Reducing Valerie and her education, her company, her work, into a four-letter word. The rudest insult they could come up with. The condescending use of the nickname. That equal sign, as if this was a logical equation. A foregone conclusion.

Naomi’s eyes darted around the hall at the crowd. How many pictures had already been taken? It must have happened while she was in the biome collecting herself. The idea of someone looking in and spray-painting this while staring at the back of her head through Cavendish ferns unsettled her. Was the person who did it one of the crowd?

“Did you see who did this?” Naomi asked them. A few scattered, embarrassed to be caught gawking. Others shook their heads. Still more were already craned over their phones, uploading their snaps, pithy captions at the ready. Stone-faced security guards broke up the crowd.

Naomi put her finger out to touch the last T of the graffiti. The paint was still tacky. Her gaze flicked up to the cameras. Their positions meant it’d be hard to get a clear shot of whoever did this, and they’d doubtless have worn a hat or a filter mask. Part of her wanted to demand the footage, but a far larger part of her wanted these words gone and off her work. Right now.

Naomi grabbed one of the large, standing Hawthorne posters, dragging it in front of the lettering to hide it from the last of the onlookers. She rummaged in the depths of the stall and found the cleaning solution she’d used first thing that morning to make the biome shine. After hours of curious hands, it was smeared with fingerprints.

Evan disappeared, returning with extra tissues liberated from the bathroom.

Naomi sprayed the letters, gritting her teeth so hard her jaw ached. The red dripped pink rivulets over the glass of the dome. Evan started scrubbing. The paint was oily, smearing into a mess.