but my fingers have closed on either side of his spine. His eyeballs are bulging and his thick-soled shoes are balancing on their toes.
His mates have come down the bus. One of them tells me to let him go.
I give him a stare. They go quiet. The bus driver, a mud-coloured Sikh in a turban, is looking in the rear mirror.
‘Is there a problem?’ he shouts.
‘I think this kid is sick,’ I say. ‘He needs some fresh air.’
‘You want me to stop?’
‘He’ll get a later bus.’ I look at the boy. ‘Won’t you?’ I move my hand. His head nods up and down.
The bus pulls up. I guide the boy to the back door.
‘Where’s his bag?’
Somebody passes it forward.
I let him go. He drops onto a seat at the bus shelter. The door closes with a hiss. We pull away.
The girl is looking at me uncertainly. Her schoolbag is on her lap now, beneath her folded arms.
I take a seat in front of her, resting my crutches on the metal rail.
‘Do you know if this bus goes past Bradford Road?’ I ask.
She shakes her head.
I open a bottle of water. ‘I can never read those maps they put up in the shelters.’
Still she doesn’t answer.
‘Isn’t it amazing how we buy water in plastic bottles. When I was a kid you would have died of thirst looking for bottled water. My old man says it’s a disgrace. Soon they’ll be charging us for clean air.’
No response.
‘I guess you’re not supposed to talk to strangers.’
‘No.’
‘That’s OK. It’s good advice. It’s cold today, don’t you think? Especially for a Friday.’
She takes the bait. ‘It’s not Friday. It’s Wednesday.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
I take another sip of water.
‘What difference does the day make?’ she asks.
‘Well you see the days of the week each have a different character. Saturdays are busy. Sundays are slow. Fridays are supposed to be full of promise. Mondays… well we all hate Mondays.’
She smiles and looks away. For a brief moment we are complicit. I enter her mind. She enters mine.
‘The guy with the braces- he a friend of yours?’
‘No.’
‘He gives you problems?’
‘I guess.’
‘You try to avoid him but he finds you?’
‘We catch the same bus.’
She’s beginning to get the hang of this conversation.
‘You got brothers?’
‘No.’
‘You know how to knee someone? That’s what you do- knee him right in the you-know-where.’
She blushes. Sweet.
‘Want to hear a joke?’ I say.
She doesn’t answer.
‘A woman gets on a bus with her baby and the bus driver says, “That’s the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen.” The woman is furious but pays the fare and sits down. Another passenger says, “You can’t let him get away with saying that. You go back and tell him off. Here, I’ll hold the monkey for you.”‘
I get a proper laugh this time. It’s the sweetest thing you ever heard. She’s a peach, a sweet, sweet peach.
‘What’s your name?’
She doesn’t answer.
‘Oh right, I forgot, you’re not supposed to talk to strangers. I guess I’ll have to call you Snowflake.’
She stares out the window.
‘Well, this is my stop,’ I say, pulling myself up. A crutch topples into the aisle. She bends and picks it up for me.
‘What happened to your leg?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why do you need the crutches?’
‘Gets me a seat on the bus.’
Again she laughs.
‘It’s been nice talking to you, Snowflake.’
47
Maureen Bracken has tubes flowing into her and tubes flowing out. It has been two days since the shooting and a day since she woke, pale and relieved, with only a vague idea of what happened. Every few hours a nurse gives her morphine and she floats into sleep again.
She is under police guard at the Bristol Royal Infirmary- a landmark building in a city with precious few landmarks. Inside the front entrance at a welcome desk there are volunteers wearing blue and white sashes. They look like geriatric beauty queens who missed their pageant by forty years.
I mention Maureen Bracken’s name. The smiles disappear. A police officer is summoned from upstairs. Ruiz and I wait in the foyer, glancing through magazines at the hospital shop.
Bruno’s voice booms from an opening lift.
‘Thank God, a friendly face. Come to cheer the old girl up?’
‘How is she?’
‘Looking better. I had no idea a bullet could make such a mess. Horrible. Missed all the important bits, that’s the main thing.’
He looks genuinely relieved. We spend the next few minutes trading cliches about what the world’s coming to.
‘I’m just off to get some decent food,’ he says. ‘Can’t have her eating hospital swill. Full of super-bugs.’
‘It’s not as bad as you think,’ I say.
‘No, it’s worse,’ says Ruiz.
‘Do you think they’ll mind?’ asks Bruno
‘I’m sure they won’t.’
He waves goodbye and disappears through the automatic doors.
A detective emerges from the lift. Italian-looking with a crew cut and a pistol slung low in a holster beneath his jacket. I recognise him from briefings at Trinity Road.
He escorts us upstairs where a second officer is guarding the corridor outside Maureen Bracken’s room in a secure wing of the hospital. The detectives use metal detecting wands to screen visitors and medical personnel.
The door opens. Maureen looks up from a magazine and smiles nervously. Her shoulder is bandaged and her arm held in a sling across her chest. Tubes appear and disappear beneath the bandages and bedding.
She’s wearing make-up- for Bruno’s sake, I suspect. And the normally featureless room has been transformed by dozens of cards, painting and drawings. A banner is draped above her bed, fringed in gold and silver. It announces: GET WELL SOON and is signed by her hundreds of students.
