The Last Bus to Walthamstow

At ten past midnight, the 123 bus to Walthamstow was running twelve minutes late, and Priya was the only person at the stop besides a man in a paint-stained hoodie. She had spent the day restocking shelves at a supermarket and the evening rewriting a friend's CV, because saying no had never been one of her strengths. Her feet ached, her phone was at four percent, and the night air smelled faintly of rain, fried chicken, and something exhaust-like that she had long stopped naming. When the bus finally arrived, only she and the hoodie man climbed aboard, and the driver, a middle-aged woman wearing a hijab and a small silver pin of an English rose, greeted them both by name.

Priya had never told anyone her name on this route, yet there it was, spoken with the ease of someone who had been paying attention. The driver, whose badge read YASMIN, explained that she had memorised the regular late passengers after three years of night shifts. Not only did she know who needed the stop by the mosque, but she also remembered which student always fell asleep and which nurse always had exact change. Priya, who had not been called by her first name all week, felt something loosen in her chest, as if a tight knot had quietly come undone. The hoodie man, who turned out to be a muralist named Callum, admitted that he had been sleeping on a friend's sofa for six weeks, painting walls by day and trying not to text his ex by night.

Yasmin listened without asking too many questions, which is a rare and generous skill. She mentioned that her own daughter had moved to Manchester for a job and that the silence in the flat had become a kind of noise. In the tired city, everyone was carrying something heavy, though most of it stayed invisible. Only after the bus had crossed the Lea Bridge roundabout did Priya realise she was not the only one holding back tears. Callum was staring at the dark window, his reflection blurred by raindrops, and neither of them pretended not to notice.

At the penultimate stop, Yasmin pulled over, reached under her seat, and handed out two small paper bags. Inside each was a mandazi — a sweet, fried dough snack that she made for her children every Saturday morning, she said, because Saturdays should taste like something. The gesture was so ordinary and so deliberate that Priya almost laughed. She ate hers while walking home, the sugar still warm against her fingers, and for the first time in weeks, the flat did not feel quite so empty when she unlocked the door.

She never saw Callum again, though she sometimes wondered whether his murals had found a wall that deserved them. She never rode the 123 bus late at night again either, because she changed shifts a fortnight later. Yet something had shifted in her, imperceptibly, the way a floor shifts under a heavy rug. The loneliness was still there, but it had been interrupted — and perhaps that was enough: not a cure, but a small, warm proof that being seen can happen anywhere, even on a night bus, for the price of a single fare.