Edgware, the end of the Northern line. Also, arguably, the beginning. We get on, take the time to select our seats in an empty carriage. So it feels random, a touch awkward even, when we end up facing each other across the narrow aisleway. In synchronicity, we fumble for our phones. Over the safety of my screen, I take in his dark, unzipped bomber jacket, showing off the t-shirt beneath, a well-fed Garfield, pulled tight over a distended belly. It has either been through countless washes or previously fitted a slimmer version of himself. His left sleeve is pushed up, revealing the faint outline of a heart, a faded memory etched in saggy skin.

     The electronic bleeping and rattle of doors sliding open at the next station draws us both reluctantly from our private worlds. More people get on and in a sunrise-robotic kind of way, they clatter and shuffle to seats further down.

     Our gazes flitter from our phones, dancing to the jolt of the carriage, occasionally resting upon one another. He is betrayed by a gaunt, ashen face and weary shoulders, laying bare the trials the years have kicked up at him, with all their dirt and dust. I wonder what my demeanour gives away.      

                                            

*

 

Crouched at the roadside in my school uniform, I press up against a stone wall, its jagged edges jabbing into the small of my back. No comfort here. No place to hide. Sweat beads cling cold and clammy to my warm nape, slowly inching their way down between my shoulder blades. I tense, bracing myself for the nausea and cramps, that monthly female joy, aggravated by the dash up the lane in the morning freeze. Nobody notices, nobody cares.

     The other kids – a rowdy bunch – are messing about as usual. Roughed up, untucked. Spoiled, stained, scuffed, even before school swings into play. Right now, they’re launching their army surplus school bags at each other’s heads, ties and tongues loose. The obscenities they’re shouting at one another are trapped in their frosty breath and hang in the air, like speech bubbles in a comic strip.

     Martin Jones half unbuttons his shirt, spits on the palm of his hand, sticks it into his armpit and pumps. As he cracks up at his beatbox creation – a series of loud farts – he looks around for peer approval, and I stare back at the sleepy gunk at the corner of his eye, at his open mouth frothing with spittle, and at the constellation of shiny acne-beacons speckling his greasy forehead. I feel nothing but repulsion. No-one finds you funny, Martin, is what I want to say (no-one apart from his cousin and sister, the kid morons sniggering at his side). I turn my head away.

     The school bus hasn’t arrived – a regular occurrence, particularly in the winter months. The lightness of the crisp air is weighed down with boredom and B.O. as the rabble grows restless. It’s closing in on 9am, the cut-off time when we’re allowed to skip school and slope off home – praying for a hot dinner or hoping to re-congregate in the field at the back of the houses. Only now, our dreamings of escape are interrupted. There’s a disappointed uproar from the roadside at the familiar mechanical coughing and spluttering from higher up the hill, followed by a rusty shift of gear and screech of brakes. One or two of the boys pretend not to hear and scoot off before the bus rounds the corner. For the rest of us though, we’ll have to brave school after all today. As the snivelling nose of the coach appears, I catch sight of my baby brother, Danny. All puffed out. A half-hearted, urgent look about him as he hurries from the other direction. Looking more tousled than most, he’s late as usual, alternating a short, sharp sprint with a few casual steps. He’s desperately trying not to lose control, to keep his cool, should anyone be interested enough to glance his way.

     We all dive on, Danny last. My eyes do a quick sweep before I swing into a premium pew – one without freshly, saliva-chewed gum lying in wait for the seat of my skirt. The upholstery, once plush, once tartan and colourful, is now faded and scratchy to the back of the legs. Can’t complain though, this is one of the better models they’ve sent us from what I recall. The company name, in a washed-out blackberry maroon, loops and skips, unapologetically, in fancy letters across the weather-beaten exterior. Sun & Sea Coaches. A semi-retired, tin can which has seen better days and is now motoring into its own personal sunset, edging towards the scrap heap on the school run.  

     As the bus lurches forwards, my brother, who is not the fastest thinker, has no choice but to slump into the first available space, next to Ava, the Irish girl from the pub up in the next village. From my seat behind, I hear her voice. Muffled and sing-songy, “Looks like you forgot to put your socks on again, Danny!” Sarah Evans, seated beside me, is going on as usual. This time about the Evans’ new colour telly and how me and my brother are going round to hers to watch Lady Di’s wedding. “It’d be a shame to have to watch that in black and white,” blah, blah. I’ve heard it all before. Word for word what her mum says to my mum, puffed up proud, over the garden fence.

     One of the older girls, Julie – tight curly perm, face caked in foundation – moves down the bus, her lower jaw lazily dropping to reveal a glistening pink blob, before snapping shut again as she masticates like a cow on the cud. In stops and starts, she releases a fruity-flavoured scent along her way. Time hangs suspended for a fraction of a second each time she pauses and grips a headrest to steady herself. With a casual swing of the hips, she finally reaches her target up front – Trev – our John Travolta-look-alike driver. She shows him a tape. Trev’s mouth is permanently fixed in that cheesy grin. Danny and I reckon if you got a cardboard cutout of John Travolta’s head, and stuck it on Trev’s shoulders, he wouldn’t look any different. Anyway, there’s a flutter of painted lashes, as Julie leans in, her wobbly chest gently coming to land on Trev’s back. She blows an impressive strawberry-pink bubble, then draws it back inside while staring vacantly out of the front window, before turning to whisper in Trev’s ear.

     I will him to keep his eyes on the road. For all our sakes. A moment later, Julie clicks the tape into position. Trev is sliding a comb through his slick-back with his right hand, while the other, extending from an arm sporting a vibrant heart tattoo, nonchalantly navigates the lanes. The steering wheel is loosely threaded back and forth, interrupted now and then by a shift of gear, at which point Trev’s comb-bearing hand is obliged to step in and seize the helm. Inevitably, there is a fraction of a second when neither hand is on the wheel. A fraction of a second, mind, I reassure myself. And all this is executed in rhythm to a tinny Shakin’ Stevens squeezing its way out of Trev Travolta’s speaker. The beat competes with Martin Jones’ gravelly guffaws. If only he’d been as quick off the mark as the other boys and heaved his heffalump of a body off home, we’d have all been the better off, for his unruly baby words in baritone will tumble from his cake hole for the rest of the bumpy journey. Some certainties are fixed, like the one etched on Trev’s arm.

     There were stories about that heart. Who it was for. Julie liked to brag, fancied herself a contender. Then there was the blonde high-heeled lady, who would ride up front with Trev every so often, jumping off at the junction just before school. Some of the girls reckoned she was Trev’s fi-an-cée, while the boys swore he was cheating on a wife. According to Julie though, it was all above board, she was from the bus company. Trev made out he didn’t enjoy the limelight. Told us it was private stuff and he wasn’t about to spill all to a bunch of school kids.

​

*

 

Trev is still preening himself and feeling pretty happy with the result – if the odd cheesy smile in his rear view mirror is anything to go by – when we screech to a halt opposite the farm at the top end of the village. Mandy Wills stomps aboard in her Kickers, huffing about nothing as usual.

     “You alright Mand?” Trev ventures.

     “Late as always!” comes the retort.

     Mandy Wills, or Wills as me and Danny like to call her, is not a pretty girl. Farm life has given her a ruddy complexion, and her hair is mousy and plain, with a poor copy of a Lady Di flick. Some of the boys call her Big Ears, for obvious reasons. She’s still a ‘popular’ girl though. Must be that loud mouth of hers. She’s bolshy, gutsy and gives as good as she gets. Grant her that.

     2And it’s a right racket you’ve got going on here, Trev,2 she adds.

     He cranes – he can’t hear a thing, what with the screaming further up the bus and the music. Wills huffs some more and hands over another tape to Trev, who is now spoilt for choice. Then she marches to the back, to sit with Julie and the other cool kids who clamour for her attention – the boys calling out ‘Big Ears’ ducking when she takes a swipe, as she moves up the bus. She almost lands in my lap, pushing herself off again from my shoulder like I’m part of the furniture, as Trev accelerates and glides across a patch of ice. Trev, like everyone else, is keen to seek Wills’ approval – attempting to make up time is his way of doing this.

     His efforts are in vain though. We’ve barely advanced a few hundred feet when we come across Wills’ dad, shifting sheep from one field to another. They’re panicked by Trev’s revving and attempt a scramble up the steep hedges. Silly things, sheep. While Trev’s smile is still intact (maybe his face is a Travolta cardboard cutout, after all?), his mood’s clearly taken a turn for the worse. A shaky leg drums in the footwell. He lights up a cigarette and winds down the window, nudging the ash into the open air, while ramping the music up a notch. Wills’ dad glances back, scowling, but there’s no deterring Trev – he’s not from the village and he’s not about to make an effort to keep in with the locals.

     Things kind of spiral from here. Wills’ dad and Trev stare each other out now, not unlike two bulls preparing for a ruckus and the bus falls silent, just for a moment, in anticipation. The staring contest is cut short though, when a sheep rolling off the hedge mistimes its landing, loses its footing, and lands on its back. A sheep on its back is even sillier than one on four legs. It can’t get up on account of the weight of its soggy wool.

     The peace that momentarily descended on the bus is broken. Wills is not amused and Julie and Martin Jones’s sister are there to back her up as they stand united, yelling at Trev from the rear seat. Tailed by Julie and her mates, Wills marches back down the bus. She glares at Trev, as she demands that he open the door. Now! And off she hops, to help the sheep roll back over. The others aren’t quite sure what to do with themselves. They don’t appear to want to get that involved, but they get down off the bus all the same. It’s mucky out there. Wills’ gang gingerly pick their way through the steamy sheep droppings which have fired out of worried back-ends. The lane has taken a hammering. Like everyone else left on board, I sit up and take in the show. It distracts for a moment at least, from the dull ache now fanning out across my lower back.

     “What ‘bout you, Trev?” grins Martin. “You not gonna ‘op off and give ‘er a 'and?” Why don’t you, Martin, and give us all some peace? I want to say. But I don’t.

     The sheep are finally penned, but the atmosphere has clearly soured. Almost everyone’s back on, and Trev’s revving. A warning to those who aren’t. He’s impatient to go and angry.  To vociferous dissent, Trev clicks off Julie’s tape (Mand’s doesn’t even get a look in), and dials into Radio 1. The volume goes up another notch. As we make it to the brow of the hill, I look round and see Julie as she swings her way, in a storm of anger, back down to the front. A freezing soup of a fog clings to the dark shape of the hedges looming over us. Nobody notices – too busy picking a fight with Trev, whacking each other over the head, shouting over the radio in each other’s faces, or chucking Opal Fruit wrappers across the walkway. The quieter ones shrink away into the hoods of their anoraks – but as I clutch my sides and rest my head on the seat in front – I swear I feel us veering, first to the left and then to the right. Trev is clearly not totally in charge of his Sun & Sea beast as it swerves and snakes down the glassy hill.

     I look up. I see it before all the others, I swear. Before Julie, who has her eyes on Trev. Before even Trev I reckon. The Hillman Imp, low-cut and concealed by the hedgerows, apart from the occasional flash of its cheeky headlamps, careering towards us, round the corner of the next bend. Olly Coombe, running an errand for his dad, no doubt.

     Trev slams on his brakes but there’s not enough time, given that he needs to allow for those long additional seconds sliding across the ice. And then the event is upon us. A long skid in slow motion as Trev battles to avoid the inevitable. I imagine Olly Coombe, not much older than us kids, spotty with his greasy, limp mop, I imagine the haunted look of desperation in the white of his eye as he swings at the steering wheel. Attempting to avert a certain fate, despite the odds. I feel the stunned silence from Ava and Danny boring into the back of the seat behind me. And I hear Martin Jones’ baby baritone whimper, mashed with the high-pitched scream from the girls on the back seat, and the sound of the Sun & Sea’s inadequate brakes. I imagine, feel, hear it all.

     Then, as if on command from an orchestral conductor, sweeping the air up with both hands and drawing a line with closed fingers, there is sudden stillness.

             

*

 

A crackly interference eventually plays out over the waves of this deathly void. Then,

     “I’ve had it with you lot!”

     Trev’s raw voice over the tannoy.

     He scoops up his jacket, slams on the door open-close button, and clatters down the steps. He hesitates a moment, fumbles for his cigarettes in his back pocket. He lights himself one, slings his jacket over his shoulder. Grinds the match under the heel of his boot. (Over the top in my opinion, given the match has already put itself out on the ice.) Then he slips and slides his way down the rest of the hill without so much as a look back at his Sun & Sea coach, which is wedged impossibly, between the hedge and Olly’s Imp.

     “We’re better off without you!” Wills yells after him.

     The spell on the bus is broken. Wills yells some more, but the words are drowned out by the cacophony of horns from the vehicles backed up behind. They are impatient for the Sun & Sea coach to right itself and move on, ignorant of the latest development with its driver. One of the shyer boys, emboldened in the chaos, has crept down to the front to honk Trev’s horn in response. I can see Olly Coombe’s big round O of a mouth staring up at us from his Hillman Imp. Sarah Evans starts up once more about that bloody telly of hers (and then moves on to the cabinet it sits in!). Ava finds her tongue and goes back to teasing Danny. Julie is now delivering a long list of expletives to anyone who cares to listen, while yanking her music and a trailing a tangle of tape out of Trev’s cassette player. Martin Jones’ machine-gun laughter of relief is ricocheting off the windows and skylight to penetrate my skull, and there is a strangely silent confetti of Opal Fruit wrappers falling all around us.

     I close my eyes, and slowly rock, knocking my forehead against the prickly, once-plush tartan of the seat in front, my nails digging into the sweaty palms of my clenched fists.

​

*

 

A muffled voice struggles to make itself heard over the background fizz of the intercom, before being drowned out by the rail squeal. I look down at my liver-spotted fists, the knuckles white with the effort of clenching. I loosen my grip. The train carriage is packed now, but between the passengers swinging from the grab handles, the odd glimpse of the tattooed forearm tells me he’s still here.

​

*

 

What with the racket, and the cramps, which intensify with the plummeting temperature on the bus, I need to get out. I turn and grab Danny by his sleeve. Ava’s jibes still ring in the air as I yank him down the aisleway and we tumble off, tripping down the hill, in Trev’s direction.

     We finally catch up with him on the main road. His thin leather jacket now pulled close around him. He steps out to face oncoming traffic, thumb raised, every time he catches the slightest mechanical sound in the distance.

     I say nothing. Hang close. He barely gives us a glance. The first vehicle on the horizon is a tractor, but Trev turns down the offer of a lift to the next farm. No matter. An old banger draws up on its tail, and he doesn’t resist when I push the front seat forward and shove Danny into the back, jumping in after. Seated up front, Trev turns to the driver. The cheesy Travolta grin has crept its way back to fill his face. With buckets of charm, he asks if we can be dropped outside the comprehensive in town, then makes small talk for the rest of the journey.

     I don’t expect a medal or anything, but nobody makes a fuss when we pull up. As Danny and I march in through the school gates, Trev dips into a telephone box. I turn back to see him, wild gestures, a pantomime character in mime. And I imagine the heart tattoo pulsating with the angry popple of flexor muscles as he grips the receiver. I’d die to be a fly inside the window of that box, to eavesdrop on his version of events, as they unravel into the ear of God-only-knows who. Wife, fiancée, mistress, bus company.

​

*

 

We come to a sudden halt. Bodies jolt. And there’s a direct view onto the tattooed forearm. He’s tapping away at a message. As we slide into the station, he gives a final, emphatic punch. And I feel the brush of his words on the air as they swoop and soar, looking for a way out.

     Then he and I both stand and move towards the door. We sway in harmony. Well, almost. Shoulder to shoulder. In limbo, between the train carriage and the world outside. I want to say, “Trevor? Trev, it’s Trev, right?” Awkwardness and adolescence no longer factor, but still, I say nothing. A sideways glance suggests I’m lurking in his peripheral vision. His Adam’s apple rises, and falls again. He presses the door-open button. “Come on.” He pummels now. The faded heart flags. The doors release.

     Those trapped words of his, entangled with my thoughts, take their chance. Sweeping out of the carriage and through the tunnels, up, up, towards the exit, where I imagine them fragmenting and floating off into the world. Then the moment’s gone. We step off, side by side, until we lose each other. Strangers on the crowded platform at Leicester Square.