The day had been relatively warm for the time of year, but it had rained in the afternoon and as evening approached, the mist had begun to rise from the damp earth, curling along the roads and settling in ghostly ribbons a few feet off the ground. The short bus journey was unpleasant: obliged to stand, she’d been hemmed in by a man in a filthy donkey jacket to her left and a mean-looking teenage boy who exuded BO to her right. The floor of the bus was wet with the rain that had dripped from half-closed umbrellas. Everyone was ill-tempered: each time the vehicle stopped, departing passengers pushed and shoved their way to the exit door, while new ones crammed in at the front, flashing passes at the driver and elbowing their way into whatever spaces they could find.
Bored and tired, she gazed disconsolately out of the rear window, peering into the night. A car was crawling along behind the bus. She’d first noticed it a few stops before. Each time the bus shuddered to a halt, the car stopped, too. It was odd that the driver didn’t want to overtake. She couldn’t see him clearly, but she could tell he wasn’t an old man. Yet even Feliks didn’t drive as cautiously as that.
Thinking of Feliks shook her out of her daydream. She hadn’t been paying proper attention to the landmarks as they passed, or even playing her usual game of counting the numbers of stops before she reached hers. Now she could see that the bus was heading for open country, which must mean that she should have got off at the last stop. Feliks would have been sitting there in the lay-by, waiting for her. He’d have been worried when she didn’t appear. She was impatient to call him, ask him to wait, tell him she’d get off the bus as soon as she could and walk back to him, but both her arms were pinioned, squashed into contorted positions by her fellow passengers. There was no chance she’d be able to remove the phone from her bag and talk to Feliks. She decided she’d get off the bus anyway: there was no point in travelling miles out of her way. If Feliks had already gone home, he wouldn’t mind returning to the lay-by to fetch her.
Shaking free her right arm, she managed to stretch out far enough to ring the bell. Immediately, the driver stamped on the brake, throwing all those standing off balance.
‘Fucking hell!’ said the man in the donkey jacket, giving her a filthy look. Several others were glaring at her, too. Flushed with shame, she squeezed her way under the arms gripping the hanging straps and stepped over bulky shopping bags to reach the door. As the people standing closest to it reluctantly made way for her, the driver hollered at her.
‘Try that trick again, love, and you’ll get the rough edge of my tongue. This is a request stop only. I need a bit more warning than a couple of fucking seconds.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She’d tried to call back to him, but her throat felt so constricted that she was sure he couldn’t have heard her. She climbed off the bus, the doors immediately swinging shut behind her, and stood at the side of the road to watch as it lurched out of sight, a moving rectangle of bright light growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared, leaving her in darkness. Belatedly, she realised there were no street lights on this stretch of road and she didn’t know how far she’d have to walk back to the lay-by. She cursed her own impulsiveness: she’d been so concerned about not upsetting Feliks that she hadn’t thought about the danger of walking alone in the dark. She knew Feliks would have wanted only for her to keep safe. She scrabbled in her bag for her phone, called him and told him to look out for her along the road. Then she set off.
‘Hello.’ The voice made her jump. It was a man’s voice, softly-spoken and well-modulated. Nevertheless, she was terrified. She looked up, appalled, and saw the car that had been following the bus. She should have noticed that it hadn’t driven past her. The driver had lowered the front passenger window and was stretching across to speak to her.
‘Don’t be afraid. I only want to help you. It’s a nasty evening, and you’re looking a bit lost.’