12

Conor wasn’t telling the truth here; he remembered it well. It was the second passenger who had first dragged him inwards. He remembered the day, the feel of his hand. They’d been on the south coast. Mum had taken them to the beach. Conor loved the sea. He’d been paddling with the reluctant Calum. Ella lay sunning herself. Mum had been watching them until she turned to the man walking the beach selling ice-lollies. A trio of Twisters and a Fab in hand, she turned back to loud cries and a man running out, whole body straining towards Conor. He watched this memory as a bystander now. Saw his own little limbs jerking as he was pulled out to sea. The man eventually reached him, turning his tiny body back over and quickly returning him to shore. Conor had felt only the cold hand of the second passenger who had pulled him down. Down for their first bus ride together.

The roads they travelled were unfamiliar to him. The man without eyelids travelled with him just this once. Here, on his first trip, as if to assure him it was safe to relax. They passed through towns much like his own, passed by beautiful parks and woodlands. Then an enormous viaduct came into view. One moment it was in the distance, and almost immediately it overtook all else, stretching out across the horizon. They drove on into one end of it and into a great bus station here on the outskirts of the city. Conor had the sense you feel on the London Underground: untold opportunities and impossible urgencies.

There were hundreds of buses passing through. The station was hunched, heaving heavy breaths. It ran like clockwork. The signs on the buses had only a number and the time, no maps noting any destinations or stops. But the number would arrive at its set time, flash on the board, sit for no more than three minutes, and depart. There must have been thirty bus stands. Nearly three hundred buses had passed through in the ten minutes he was there. Conor knew already that you could take any of these buses and never get anywhere. But that seemed to be precisely the point. He was about to board a second bus when a hand reached and grabbed him by his shirt collar and wrenched him back. He tumbled back off the steps of the bus, and as he landed, about to crack his head on the concrete, he coughed and opened his eyes to bright light and the slowly emerging faces of Calum, Ella and Mum.

They mostly avoided water after that. Mum decided there was plenty of fun and adventure to be had on land, so they stuck to forests and hills. They never told their Dad what had happened that day. He was away that week, and they all knew Mum was ashamed of what had happened. He’d only pile on, barbed jokes for years. Conor and Mum had gone to the hospital, and even after they had cleared him, she remained with him constantly for two days, resting together and watching movies. He even slept on the couch beside her. Conor learnt later from Ella that she hadn’t slept, monitoring him, scared of secondary drowning. It didn’t matter to him; those two days, inseparable from his mother, were the best of his young life.

After that experience, Conor went to his buses often. But never again to the viaduct bus station. Empty, yes, but frantic. He found on his buses a quiet that he could never quite grasp up top. The man without eyelids was never there when he arrived, only as he left. Conor could travel his buses for hours alone, but whenever and wherever he got off, he would ring the bell, thank the missing driver, and as he stepped off, the man without eyelids would step on. They would each say nothing, Conor would stare at the man's shoes, his hands, his neck or chin. It was always a while before he’d meet his gaze. One. But when he did. Two. Conor would return.