They caught the bus back from the park. One of those single-decker, no-nonsense vehicles. A long, blockish tractor of a thing. They scanned their passes and made their way to the back. It wasn’t a route they’d been on before. It took a different way back to the centre, meandering through narrow streets and thoroughfares they’d never even guessed were there. Halal shops, arch mechanics. Dilapidated old church buildings repurposed as community centres. A stack of containers that had doors cut out of them and turned into a market. It was good to see this place, they said. A whole other place. ‘You only see this sort of thing on the bus,’ they said. 

The bus stopped and a large middle-aged woman wheezed on. With her bleach white hair, her pale complexion, her white tracksuit top and white shopping bags, she looked like the sketch outline of someone who’d spent an exhausting morning spending money she didn’t have. The most defining thing about her was her face – a downward-curving, double-folded, toothless grump of a mouth, the kind of grimace that cried out for a pipe and a sailor’s cap. She distributed disdain right and left as she shuffled her way down, falling back into her seat with her feet in the air as the bus lurched forwards. 

Once she’d settled herself, she called someone on the phone. She had it on speaker so everyone heard it. He couldn’t understand why anyone would do that – have a private conversation in public. At full volume – like the two of them were sitting next to each other talking through bullhorns. 

‘Hello? Michael?’

‘Jean?’

‘It’s Jean, Michael.’

‘I know I know, you said.’

‘How are you?’

‘What?’

‘I say how are you?’

‘I just woke up.’

‘You woke up?’

‘Yes. You woke me up.’

‘How are you anyway? In yourself?’

He sighs – a long, back of the throat thing, full of the suffering of the world.

‘Y’know,’ he says, eventually. ‘Y’know about all that.’

There’s a pause, which extends into a silence. The bus grinds on. 

Have they finished? Did Michael ring off and leave Jean clutching her phone, staring out of the window? They couldn’t possibly turn round to look – it would be too obvious. 

‘Did you watch the football?’ says Michael, suddenly. 

‘No. Did you?’

‘I did.’

‘How was it.’

‘Awful. Until it wasn’t.’

‘They won though.’

‘They won. They didn’t deserve to.’

‘Still they won.’

He sighs again. It sounds more like a death rattle.

‘God I hope this weather breaks,’ he says.