Last night winter pressed us onto the night bus. It wasn’t much warmer on board. We took up the back rows of the top deck, pretty much the only people up there. Frosted fingers of February air poked us in the ribs. Sophie’s toes were numb. Lisa slapped her hands together and breathed aggressive blasts of body heat into her gloved fists. Walker put his arms around Kerry and rubbed his hands on her shoulders. Their puffa jackets got crushed together. Hughsie flicked his lighter on and off. It wasn’t effective in warming him or any of the rest of us, but it looked good. Shell and a couple of the others had kebab remains in paper with them. The cold got to the food before we did. The smell of the strips of meat filled the top deck, making unsubstantiated promises of hunger sated, inner warmth attained.

‘Look at that,’ said Millsie. Ice patterns had etched themselves across the bus windows, a few on the inside, most on the outside. Lisa put her face close to the glass, breathed out and then used her gloved finger to crack the weakened ice. A couple of us checked our ‘phones. But it was so cold that in the end it was easiest to stick our hands in our pockets, and keep rigid, trying not to shiver too much. Even our chatter trailed away. A common thought threaded through the group at each bus stop: hurry up, I want to get back indoors. Walker was the first to talk about it, but soon we were all sketching out descriptions of duvets, central heating, blankets, just general being warm chat.

We didn’t notice the man coughing at first. Not until the cough had become a phlegmy hack. Kerry squirmed inside the nest of Walker’s arms. She’s sensitive to germs; she sees them coming a mile off. She set off a reaction among the rest of us. We each shuddered, pouted, held a hand in front of our mouths, blinked. Eventually the man knew that he had our attention. His cough choked off. We were all looking at him. He was a crumpled figure in stubble, unwashed layers of mismatched clothes, grey hair combed back in a bygone-days’ fashion. He seemed old. He was older than us. A herd of antelope giving singular fixed attention to a sudden predator on the plain: we watched the man for signs of life, or imminent catarrahic death.

The man took a stiff bit of cloth from a pocket and wiped his face with it. Millsie winced. The man leaned towards us and put out a finger to Kerry.

‘You look just like my wife,’ the man said. Kerry tittered. Walker squeezed her tighter in his embrace. None of us said anything. The man continued.

‘You got the same, the same, sneer she had last time I saw her. What’s up with you pretty girls, always sneering.’ He enunciated ‘sneering’ with a long nasal whine.

Walker was trapped under Kerry’s body. He said, ‘Shut up tramp.’ His teeth chattered, making the words fumble as they came out. The man didn’t appear to register an interruption.

‘She never understood what I went through, what I was trying to tell her. She thought I was nuts, lost it. She told me to pull myself together, get over it, that it was nothing. Women are fucking idiots. What happened to me was real, no-one got it. They all thought I was losing it. I had to get out of it in the end, give up my taxi. It was a beautiful taxi, Hackney Carriage, black cab. Noble job, that, you have to have something about you, and they said I’d lost it. They never had it and they thought they could tell me that I lost it.’

If the man hadn’t been leaning towards us, staring at Kerry, we wouldn’t have thought that he was still talking to us.

‘It was like this when it started. Cold as hell. Easy to get fares night like that. Night like that you could drown in them. They end up fighting over you. Couple girls earlier on, they nearly wrenched my cab door off trying to be first in. I drove off, left ‘em both, brawling like cats on the street. No-one knows how to be ladies anymore. So then that’s when I pick him up. I thought about it a lot since, tried to remember all the details, but at the end of the day he was just another fare to start with, some feller standing in the yellow of the street lights with his thumb out.

‘He gets in and says the address. I know the street, of course, night like this could make me rich so I take the shortest route, thinking I can get back into town sooner, clean up.

‘“Which house, mate?” I ask him as we go up the street. I keep the speed low. But the feller’s shaking his head.

‘“You’ve gone wrong,” he tells me. “This is all wrong.” Well I know I haven’t gone wrong. I look in the rearview mirror at him, get the measure of him.

‘I see him in the back, all agitated. Dressed classic gentleman, belted trench coat, striped tie knotted at his neck, one of those hats they used to wear in films, a fedora, they used to wear ‘em in films…’ the man trailed off. He blinked and looked around our faces one by one. He looked confused, not just in a mental old man way. Then he found Kerry’s pinched little face again. Like a man pulling himself out of the sea by a rope tied to a lifeboat he began speaking again. At first with little gasps between each word, and then more confidently.

‘There – he is now – ,’ we all looked around, then smirked and hee hee’d at each other.

‘Looking – out the – window, panicky like.

‘“You’ve got it wrong,” he tells me.

‘I tell ‘im, “I never got it wrong, I went to the address you told me.” I repeat it back to ‘im.

‘He says, “Yes that’s right, but you’ve brung me to the wrong one.”

‘“Look mate,” I says and I repeat the address, borough and all to him.

‘He says, “Well you’ve brung us to the wrong place and I’m sorry I ever got in your cab.”

‘I’m fit to smack the feller one right there. “I know my job,” I tells him and to prove it I crank up the speed and take him around the block.

‘“Yes,” he says, “yes,” as we pass the old picture house and the swimming baths, even the old library. And “Yes,” he whispers when we swing back into the street he asked for. “There’s the tree,” he says, voice all breaking. “It’s so different,” he says, but he wasn’t talking to me.

‘I look in the rearview mirror again and the feller has his face in his hands. “Mate,” I say, “this street’s been like this for years, as long as I’ve been driving cabs.” I see him look up at me and he’s furious with me, I never seen anger so black since.

‘“It’s a trick,” he says.

‘I was almost feeling sorry for him for a minute, but then I get mad again myself. “Get out,” I tell him, “bugger off.” I’m not even bothered about the money he owes at this point I’m too pissed off.

‘The feller grabs the handle of the cab door, so I think he is about to get out, then this I don’t know maybe a shadow or something like that goes over his face and he stays put. “Just,” he says, “just drive me to Brockwood.”

‘I ask him to repeat that.

‘“Brockwood,” he says. “It’s in Surrey.”

‘“I know where it is,” I say, “but it’s going to cost you.”

‘“Yes, I know,” says the feller, “it already has.” And then he laughs into his lap, he’s not looked me in the eye this whole time.

‘“Fine,” I say, and off we go.

‘I keep checking the rearview mirror, but the feller’s not even glancing at me. He’s either staring at the back of his hands as they rest on his knees or rubbing the condensation off the window to look out. Every time I see him do that he starts off muttering to himself. I turn the heat up in the cab so the windows steam up even more. I can’t stand his muttering. It does my head in. I put the radio on, but when some pop track comes on, Kylie or something like that, the man raps on the plastic screen between us.

‘“Can you turn that off please?” He says. He’s polite, and the way his voice sounds is so sad, like he’s lost something, hope or something, so I turn it off and we go the rest of the way to Brockwood both of us quiet, listening to the sound of the winter crisped road rolling along underneath the cab.

‘We go on like that all the way to Brockwood. When we get near he just says, “follow the signs for the cemetery.” I swear to you now that I thought he just wanted to go somewhere near to the cemetery. I wasn’t expecting to have him say, “pull up here, when we get alongside it.

‘“Where to from here mate?” I ask, still thinking at that point that he just wants to get his bearings. He’s started that muttering again.

‘“What’s that?” I ask him.

‘He speaks louder, I’m sure I can feel his breath warm in my ear, “I just wondered why she never visited, that’s all.”

I  turn around quick, but he’s not there. The passenger seats are empty. There’s no-one in my cab but me. The door never went I swear it, he didn’t get out, but he must have got out somehow.

‘I’m cursing and I fling myself out the cab and I run up and down the street by the cemetery. He’s not there. He just couldn’t have got away that quick.’

The old geezer’s eyes were watering. His nose was running. It was gross. He started pointing his finger at Kerry again, shouting at her.

‘I’m telling you he couldn’t have got away that quick. I would have seen him.’ The old man had spittle on his grey beard by this point. Kerry tried to get deeper into Walker’s puffa jacket, but Walker wasn’t having it. He rolled her off him and swung from seat to seat to the man.

‘Shut up you mental old wanker,’ Walker said to the man, but he didn’t get too close. The man smelled and Walker told us later that he didn’t want to touch his filthy clothes. The man fell back in his seat a bit.

‘I’m just saying,’ the man started talking in a gentler voice. ‘I’m just telling you. No-one believes me. I had to drive all the way back to London. I told her about it and she was just like you young idiots, didn’t listen. But I looked it all up didn’t I? That street? Bombed in the war. Thirty people dead. Women and children in those houses. All dead. That cemetery? That’s where they buried soldiers. That’s where they buried soldiers. It all fits.’

The man was looking from one face to another. We blanked him. None of us wanted to encourage this smackhead any longer.

‘You’re stupid. Like all young people. I been looking into it. No-one listened then either. Had to connect it all up myself. Even lost my cab. She went and left me. Gold digger anyway. Lost my house. They said it was because I was drinking, but I was drinking because none of them would listen to me. They thought I was drunk that night. I never drank on duty, but I did after that. I admit it, okay. I was scared to go out in my cab again after that. Who wouldn’t be? None of you kids anyway. Look at you now. White as ghosts. Pitiful.’

The bus stopped, we all lurched half out of our seats.

‘It’s us,’ said Shell.

‘Thank fuck,’ said Hughsie.

We all got up and threw our greasy kebab wrappers back where we’d been sitting. When we walked past the man we each avoided his eyes. That didn’t stop him from talking. His words followed us down the stairs and onto the icy street.

‘Stupid kids. No-one listens.’