15

‘What shall we call it?’ she yells from two seats back. ‘Shut up, stop joking.’ She laughs, pulls on her woollen jumper. ‘I got bare wasted last night, and I was smoking so much.’ Suddenly jumping up, ‘Where are we? Is this our stop?’ She rings the bell several times, then clumps downstairs. He rises to follow, hesitates at the top of the steps, gazing at the people on the deck who are absorbed by their phones or scanning the ice cream sky. She’s shouting at the driver below: ‘Where are we going?’ A man in a crumpled jacket throws him a perspicuous glance; he shifts his rucksack, ambles down to the lower deck, a grime-silked hand leaving prints on the rail. ‘Why aren’t you stopping?’ she demands of the driver. ‘Are you taking us to Africa?’ Through thick lenses, rows of headscarved black women watch them. ‘That was our stop,’ she bawls as the bus rushes past the closed stop. ‘That was our fucking stop!’ ‘Nobhead,’ he says under his breath. Pausing in traffic, the grumbling driver throws the doors open and the city breathes in – London. They spring off, like a pair of raptors go loping down the street; she is slightly ahead of him.

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