The Last Stop

By the time Leonie stole the bus, she had washed it.

There was no point leaving with a dirty windscreen. People remembered the dirt long after they forgot why you had driven away.

She had spent twenty three years taking the number six from the station to the estate above the reservoir. That morning, the route was being replaced by an app. A man younger than her bus had put a tablet on her dashboard and explained that passengers would now request journeys when they needed them.

"Except your passengers," he said, noticing the photograph taped beside the fare machine. "Most of those will be eligible for assistance."

It was a photograph of Leonie's dog.

She let him finish.

At nine he asked for the keys. At nine twelve she drove out of the depot with both sets in her pocket.

At the first stop, Mr Lambert was holding a cardboard box. He had retired from the depot before Leonie started there, which did not prevent him from telling her how the doors ought to sound.

"You're late."

"Last day."

"No reason to be late."

She lowered the step. He climbed aboard with the box and put it on the seat beside him. Through a tear in the lid she saw the blue enamel of a number six.

"You've stolen the stop sign," she said.

"They left it in a skip."

"Still council property."

"You'd better arrest me."

At the reservoir turn she stopped for a woman with a suitcase. The woman had been waiting there on Mondays for eleven years, always in the same green coat. Leonie had never asked her name. Drivers who knew everybody's business called that friendliness. Leonie called it a reason to take the next bus.

"Station?" the woman asked.

Leonie nodded. Her phone began to ring in the pocket above the engine controls.

At the old school, a boy she did not recognise waved with both hands. She opened the doors.

"Does this go to the hospital?"

"Change at the station."

He looked at the timetable nailed to the shelter. Its paper had been covered by a notice offering a code to scan.

"Which one?"

She told him. He repeated the number as though she had given him a complicated address. On his wrist was a visitor's band, the kind they handed out when somebody needed permission to see a patient.

Her phone stopped ringing. The depot radio crackled.

"Leonie. Return the vehicle."

She put the handset back without answering.

Mr Lambert leaned into the aisle.

"They'll have your pension."

"They can't have my pension. They can have my job."

"You need the job?"

"Yes."

He settled back. The box made a small grinding noise against the seat.

At the next stop there was nobody. Leonie opened the doors anyway. For years she had watched a man come down the hill at exactly the wrong moment, halfway through raising a hand as her bus pulled away. She would wait on Wednesdays, when she knew he had a hospital appointment, although he never noticed the difference.

She waited now. The hill stayed empty.

The woman in the green coat glanced at her watch.

"I've got a train."

"Thirty seconds."

"I've already waited fifteen minutes."

Leonie closed the doors.

Her old manager rang as they passed the bakery. She answered through the bus speaker, forgetting that the passengers could hear.

"You can't do this," he said.

"I'm on the route."

"You're not making a point. You're taking a vehicle without permission."

"I know."

"Then what do you think happens at the station?"

She had imagined that somebody would take a photograph. A small crowd might stand beside the bus, people from the estate who would explain what the route meant. She had not imagined the woman with the suitcase getting angry, or the empty hill, or a boy counting the coins in his palm to see whether he could afford a second fare.

"I give you the keys," she said.

"Both sets."

"Both sets."

The radio went quiet.

Before the bridge, Mr Lambert stood up and asked her to stop. There was no bus stop there, only the shuttered shop where his wife had sold flowers.

"Not here."

"It'll take a minute."

"Sit down."

He stayed standing, one hand gripping a seat. The woman turned towards him.

"Some of us have somewhere to go."

Leonie saw herself in the mirror: a driver listening to an old man while somebody else missed a train. It was the same argument, just turned the other way round.

"I'm not taking you on a farewell tour," she said.

Mr Lambert's face changed. He sat down very carefully, with his box on his knees.

She drove over the bridge. The reservoir was low enough to show the steps of the drowned pumping station. She had seen those steps a hundred times. Today she noticed that they ended in the water, rather than starting there.

At the station, her manager was waiting with two security guards. Neither guard looked pleased to be involved.

Leonie opened the doors and switched off the engine. The woman got out first, dragging her suitcase over the step. Mr Lambert followed without looking at Leonie. He left the box on his seat.

The boy stayed at the back.

"Eleven," she called to him. "Bay four."

"Is that this side?"

Her manager held out his hand. She put the keys in it, one set and then the other. He began to tell her about a meeting that afternoon.

"I heard you," she said. "I need five minutes."

She took off her driver's jacket and laid it over the steering wheel. Without it she looked less like someone who knew where to go.

The boy followed her through the open doors. At bay four the hospital bus was closing up. She raised a hand. The driver stopped and opened the door again.

Leonie gave the boy the change for his fare, then stepped back from the kerb. She waited until he found a seat and saw her through the window.

After the bus left, she went back for Mr Lambert's box. It was heavier than she had expected. On the back of the sign someone had written the date of the last service.

She carried it into the station office and asked for a chair.