The Bus Route Home

The shop bell rang whenever anyone pushed the door, and Margaret heard it from the flat upstairs before she saw who had come in. Her mother kept boiled sweets in jars near the till and knew most customers by name. Her father drove the early bus and came home smelling of diesel and rain.

Margaret was the older of two. Paul arrived when she was four, small and furious, and she decided at once that he was hers to look after. Their bedroom overlooked the yard behind the shop, where crates of lemonade were stacked in summer and where Paul once tried to build a go-kart from a pram and a plank.

School was a ten-minute walk along terraced streets. Margaret learned to read quickly and liked the quiet of it, the way a sentence could hold still while the world outside kept moving. At home she read aloud to Paul until he fell asleep, one chapter at a time, even when she had homework of her own waiting on the table.

On Sundays the family walked to her grandmother's house for dinner. The table was always too small for everyone, and Margaret sat on a stool at the corner, listening to stories about the war, about ration books, about neighbours who had moved away and never written back. She did not know then that she was collecting material for a life she would one day tell in full.