The Third Bus

March 2019

Thursday

1

'You're under my feet,' his wife said.

His head spun with fury. He spluttered, but he'd run out of words. 

He waited in case she had something to add, but she was busy extracting the Dyson from the hall cupboard. 

Enough. This was it. He would leave. He thumped his way upstairs to the bedroom, where he glared around. 

Fury began to be overlaid with purpose. It helped to have purpose. His urgent desire was to be anywhere other than here. He threw a few changes of underwear, some shirts and essentials into a holdall. It didn't take long. Down he came to the front door, where it struck him he might need his passport. 

Everything in the house had its place, and the place for passports was a drawer in the dining room, where Cath was vacuuming. Dumping the bag in the hall, he pushed in through the roar of cyclone technology.

Briefly she glared at him. 'For goodness' sake.' She was running one of the machine's attachments along the tops of things-the dresser, the picture frames, the curtain pelmet.

The passport had three years to run. The photograph that once he had hated for making him look old now looked young. Time hurries on. Here was his birth certificate too, completed in the faded copperplate handwriting of some long-dead registrar. He slid it between the pages of the passport.

'Okay, I'm leaving.' He managed to keep his tone even.

'What?'

'I'm leaving, I said. Saying goodbye.'

She shook her head, stretching on tiptoe to reach a corner of the ceiling. Not a word, not a glance, refusing to engage. He marched back through the hall to the kitchen, where he reached for the pad. Cath, he scribbled. It's plain that we've run out of road. I need my own life. So do you. I'll be in touch to agree whatever needs agreeing. Felix

Act now, think later. His feet carried him towards the front door. 

Outside, the breeze smelled of new growth, life, freedom. The sunshine bounced off the primroses he'd planted last autumn and the blue sky sported fluffy white clouds. Beyond the front gate lay a whole world into which he was going to vanish until he felt calmer, more cogent. 

Only now he thought of the car, squeezed into a space a few houses along. It was his, bought and paid for a year ago with his money, not Cath's. A red Honda Civic, one previous owner, the interior still smelling new. By some sublime serendipity the registration number ended FLX. He could slip back inside for the keys and drive it away.

The sound of vacuuming continued. She'd soon pay attention if she couldn't drive to the shops anymore, or to Laura and the grandkids, which was a dog's hindleg of a journey by public transport. Laura would have to ferry her back and forth, or persuade Trevor to. That was a nice thought-smartarse DC Trevor Timms reduced to a chauffeur for his mother-in-law.

Nice, but mean, and the car would be trackable. His control-freak of a son-in-law could conceivably use his police powers and connections to come after him, like one of those implacable Wild West bounty hunters. Okay, unlikely, but even so where would he drive to? Key in ignition, he would need a destination in mind.

Decision made-leave the car. It was time to make free with his senior citizen's freedom pass. He'd had it more than a year and hardly used it. Shouldering the holdall, he set off on foot for the bus stop on Clapham Common, where he would take the first bus that came, to the end of its route, then another. He would lie low until he was ready to talk, somewhere unpredictable where he wouldn't be followed or recognised. Where would three buses take him, he wondered.

In no time he was crossing the grass of the common, swerving patches of mud and clumps of daffodils without making sense of them, as if in a dream. He was at the stop, no one else here, a bus pulling in just when he needed it, the doors opening for him. As the freedom pass beeped him aboard, the driver met his eyes, grinning. Did he look different, high on this rush of nervous excitement? How foolhardy he was being. For seven days he'd known that his life had to change, but he hadn't expected to be so impulsive.

From the upper deck, he watched the budding trees of the common glide past, people playing fetch with their dogs in the spring sunlight, then the restaurants on Battersea Rise, overflowing with chattering youngsters. A world full of rising sap. 

Where was he heading? He had no idea. It was enough for the next day or two to evade confrontation and questioning. He felt certain he wouldn't be back.

Five minutes later, the bus kicked everyone off at Clapham Junction. No matter, it was only midday, and there was no reason to hurry to wherever he was going. He would stock up with cash here, so he couldn't be traced by his card transactions. Trevor wasn't actually going to come after him-the supercilious git would more probably join with Cath in saying good riddance-but there was no harm in playing at outwitting pursuit. It kept his mind off the enormity of what he was doing. It held doubt and panic at bay.

After checking his balance at the ATM, he retreated to a quiet corner inside the bank, where he crouched on a chair, doing sums in the notebook he kept in his wallet. He would leave plenty to cover the month's standing orders, groceries and so on for Cath. His two pensions and hers would soon be paid in, and the account would be flush again. There was more than enough to go round.

The withdrawal was more than an ATM would dish out. He queued nervously for a teller, who counted the little stack of notes twice before pushing it across with a bright smile. 'Lovely weather, Mr Walton. Enjoy your afternoon.' He nodded dumbly at her, blushing to his ears like an incompetent bank robber, half expecting an alarm to sound or burly men to seize hold of him. 

There were four credit cards in his wallet-his main one and three store cards. Glancing around, he made the maximum withdrawal on each at the ATM inside the bank. It took several minutes, but thankfully no one was queuing behind him.

His jacket pockets were bulging with money. He hurried back to his corner to sort himself out. Surely someone was watching by now-a suspicious bank clerk or a pickpocket. All seemed intent on their own business or were gazing at the newsfeed above the queue for the tellers. The screen showed another queue-refugees at some European border, driven and desperate. In flight. 

His innards contracted. Anxiety clutched at his lungs. What the hell was he playing at, fleeing home and safety himself? What would become of him? Feeling lightheaded, unreal, he took a deep breath to steady himself. Around him, the normality of grubby green carpet and subdued Thursday afternoon activity continued, but his eyes were drawn back to the screen, to meet those of a wide-eyed child who had witnessed unimaginable things. 

Shame on him. No one was bombing or terrorising him. Running away was self-indulgence. He rose to his feet. All he had to do was admit his foolishness, deposit all this cash, and go home.

The idea was dispiriting. Defeating. He didn't think he could face it, the prospect of spending day after day, the rest of his life, trying not to mind about Cath. No... no... he had to do this-going had to be better than staying. He set about stuffing furtive clumps of notes into the holdall, his inner pockets, his wallet, telling himself to be brave. 

Still no one was watching. He'd be on CCTV of course, but so what? A man withdrawing his own money. A man whose credit card debt would be settled in full automatically. He headed for the door.

CCTV was everywhere, a new adversary to play at outwitting. Disguise was the answer. From the bank he went to a young person's clothes store, where he paid cash for what he believed was known as a 'hoodie', in navy blue, trying it on quickly for size without visiting the changing room. Then to a sports shop for a cheap pair of blue-and-white trainers and a green baseball cap to cover his grey curls, which were a dead giveaway. 

In the gents at McDonald's, he put these things on and confronted himself in the mirror, fidgeting with the dangling drawstrings, repositioning the stiff Donald-Duck brim of the cap. Ludicrous-he couldn't possibly appear in public like this. He began wrestling his way out of the hoodie, then stalled because he was forgetting the point. Vanity had nothing to do with it. He made himself see with a stranger's eyes-some old bloke, down on his luck. His M&S trousers were wrong, too smart for the trainers. The tie needed to go, and for a real change in appearance he should lose the glasses. Except for reading he could manage without them-his distance sight was improving with age, each prescription weaker than the last. 

He squashed jacket and brogues into the holdall, wrapped his tie around the glasses and zipped them and his wallet into a pocket of the hoodie. Blinking to clear his vision and steady his nerves, he lowered the brim of the baseball cap and ventured out into the cacophony of piped music and burger-eaters.

Nobody laughed or paid special attention.

He was thinking like a proper fugitive now. It struck him that the freedom pass might be trackable, so in the soft-focus world without his glasses, he went next to a newsagent, and bought a pay-as-you-go travelcard from a man with a blurred Asian face, who looked past him...