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Chapter One
We caught the same bus from the same stop five mornings a week, and had never so much as smiled at one another. It didn't strike me as odd until the day she disappeared.
She lived in a flat above the hairdressers' on Vernon Road itself, almost directly across the road from the bus stop. I saw her in the window once, lifting up the curtains with one hand while she pulled her other arm into her coat, looking up the road for the bus. The entrance to her flat must have been at the back of the building, because sometimes when she was running late I would see her hurrying up the narrow passage at the side of the shop, and I would ask the bus driver to wait for her.
The first time I took any real notice of her was shortly after Christmas, a particularly cold day, drizzling rain that sneaked in through the fibres of my anorak to gnaw at my bones. Vernon Road is a straight road sentry-lined by red-brick terraces, and the wind fairly tears along in the winter. She was bundled up in an army-surplus coat with the hood up, a few strands of her long dark hair straying out to collect globules of rain. She had her knees slightly bent and her hands shoved deep into her pockets, and was moving from side to side in an attempt to keep warm. She was ten years younger than me, in her early twenties, and her skin was pale and clear, and there was a sharpness, an awareness in the way she moved. I waited for her to turn towards me so that I could catch her eye and speak, but I was cold with the rain that ran down my neck and under my shirt, and the moment passed me by.
She was running late on that last day. I saw her rushing up the passage, and the driver waited, and I was upstairs and in my seat too quickly to allow her to thank me. It wasn't that I didn't want to speak to her - in many ways it would have been nice to pass the slow crawl into the city centre in conversation with another passenger. Another man probably would have struck up conversation, about the weather, or the traffic, or the benefits of the proposed tram system.
The people I work with don't understand why I'm so excited by the tram scheme. I find that strange; the scheme is being run out of the office next to ours, and impinges on all the work we do. They seem to be obsessed with the big city centre schemes - the plans for the Broadmarsh shopping centre, the new international-standard ice stadium, the redevelopment of the canalside area into new offices and trendy wine bars and loft apartments. Me, give me something like transport, something that will change the way we move around the city. That's what gets me going.
Of course, the guys at work think I'm mad for using public transport at all. They often ask me why I come into work by bus rather than by car. "You're crazy, Peter," they say. "Buses are a nightmare." They're unreliable, slow, dirty. I could shave an hour off my daily commute if I only drove in. I have a number of stock replies; that parking is terrible in the city centre, that there are too many cars on the road already, that Alison needs the car for her work, that I can read on the bus. Actually, that last one is a lie; I tried very hard, but reading on buses makes me feel sick.
But the real reason I like to travel on buses, the reason I would rather not get into conversation with my fellow travellers, is that from my regular seat, on the top deck, kerbside, about halfway back, I can see the people waiting at the bus stops, and watch the ones who come upstairs.
People who travel regularly on buses tend to stick to certain zones. The pensioners and mothers with babies sit downstairs, for obvious reasons, joined by those only travelling a few stops and those who don't use buses regularly. Young children play driver upstairs at the front; teenagers and alienated youth lounge across the back with their feet up. The middle section upstairs is filled with novel-readers; slightly further back are the newspaper-readers and the watchers, who look at the houses and streets as we pass. It may be a gross oversimplification of the nuances of the zones, the crossovers and the time factors; but it is true, nevertheless.
I count the regulars on and off; it is satisfying to predict who will rise for each stop, and how many more or less there are than when I got on myself. In the mornings it is always more, in the evenings, less. A slow count up to a day at work, and a slow wind down at the end.
The girl - woman - who gets on at my stop sits near the front of the novel-readers, usually two rows in front of me and across the aisle, just behind the stairwell. She doesn't read, however - she writes. She has a thick hardback notebook and spends many journeys bent over with the book on her knee, writing and rewriting, thumbing back through the pages, looking up and frowning as the bus jolts her hand. There is something fascinating about watching her, seeing her movements, the physical evidence of the thoughts she is pursuing being marked down on the page. Watching her fills the moments between the bus stops much more satisfactorily than a conversation about the weather ever could. And she gets off the bus at the stop before the city centre, the last of my regulars before the mass changeover that occurs every morning in the Market Square.
Except, that last day, the day she disappeared, she didn't get off at her stop. I watched her, barely breathing, waiting for the daydreamer's sudden jerk awake, the lunge for the bell before the stop is missed. She didn't move.
I wanted to say to her, "Quick!" I wanted to ring the bell for her, to lean across two rows and the aisle to nudge her, but we didn't have that level of intimacy and I had to sit there and watch. She looked out of the window but made no effort to rise for her stop. Then it was too late, the bus did not even slow down, and she turned her head as if to see her stop from this new, going-on-past angle.
I wouldn't have thought too much of it, except that she was dressed for work - sensible shoes, thick black tights, black skirt that stopped just short of her knees, the red-and-white-striped shirt with the call centre's logo on the breast pocket, untucked at the back as usual, her denim jacket on the seat next to her. Her hair was scraped back into a low ponytail, a few wisps loose around her ears, as it usually was. She even had the swipecard for the security door clutched against the cover of the notebook in her hand.
We came into the city centre and pulled round towards the Market Square stop. She seemed to have made a decision, and put the swipecard between the notebook pages as a marker and shifted her open bag onto her shoulder. All of the other remaining regulars got up and moved towards the stairs. She put the notebook into the top of her bag and gathered up her jacket. I found myself hoping that she was doing some shopping or had an appointment somewhere in the city before work, but she didn't move. She seemed to be considering something, her shoulders hunched, looking down at her jacket scrunched up in her arms. Downstairs, the doors clattered open and people started to get off, but still she sat there.
The empty seats began to fill with the less familiar city centre passengers, and then we were pulling out of the square. She didn't get up at the Broadmarsh Centre, or even move as the bus stuttered up the hill towards the railway station. Half of those on the top deck got up and edged towards the stairs, but she stayed seated, looking up at those going past her. I watched her hesitate. The last in line began to move down the stairs, but still she hesitated. Then, just as I thought she had missed that stop too, she got up suddenly. As she swung herself down onto the first step her bag knocked against the rail - she pulled it onto her shoulder again, annoyed, and moved on down before the driver shut the doors.
Her actions surprised me. It was very rare for one of the regulars to get off at the wrong stop, but to dash to the railway station in clothes relating to four stops earlier was unprecedented. I looked around for support, but there were no regulars left to turn to. As I sat considering what this might mean, I realised that she had left something behind - her notebook, bookmarked with her swipecard. It must have fallen from her bag in her rush to get down the stairs, and now it lay on the floor in the aisle, half under a seat just in front of the stairwell.
Correct procedure would be to pick them up and hand them to the driver as I got off. The bus company would telephone her office and return them to her. But what if she didn't want that? I felt some sense of complicity, for having watched her get off at the wrong stop, for not having reminded her of her obligations. They wouldn't look kindly on her leaving that swipecard for just anybody to pick up. I looked around quickly and, before I could talk myself out of it, I gathered my things and moved up the bus, stooping to pick up the notebook, and quickly slid into the seat it had fallen under. One of the novel-readers glanced up, but went back to reading. I put my briefcase down on the seat next to me. Nobody appeared to be watching me, so I looked down at the notebook.
It was small, with a glossy black cover. The plastic coating on the cover had been scraped in a couple of places, the cardboard underneath rearing through, and the corners were dented and soft. I knew it was important to her, whatever state she kept it in - I had watched her often enough to realise the notebook's personal value. I could get off at the next stop, run back to the station and see if she was still there. I imagined myself on the platform, seeing her sitting on a bench, rummaging through her bag, close to panic as realisation unravelled. I saw myself running up to her, stopping slightly out of breath, handing her the notebook. She would take it and smile and say -
But going back would make me late for work myself, and I was on the Planning Hotline rota that morning. If I was going to get off at the next stop I should have gone down the stairs already - the driver had closed the doors and was preparing to pull away.
But, of course, I knew where she lived. She could cover the loss of the swipecard for one day - I would take the notebook round after work and return it to her then. I opened it up. She had written her name and address on the inside of the cover in blue biro. Sophie Taylor. Sophie. I sat back and watched as Trent Bridge and my stop approached. Yes, I would take the notebook round when I went to see Sophie later on.
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