Passenger Confessions: Sunday

Elsie boards the Sunday bus, best coat buttoned wrong and furred with her cat, Cooking Fat’s love.

The journey takes longer. Her thoughts blind her to the window scenes. Elsie collected flowers from the communal garden early, before anyone could lecture her for doing so. She wrapped them in the community newsletter and slipped them into her plastic handbag. Water darkens her coat. She doesn’t notice.

The driver checks her bus pass, tells her she’s looking well. Elsie doesn’t hear him but she nods and shuffles to a seat. The bag drips on the bus floor. She perches it between her feet so she won’t forget it.

A face she recognises gets on the bus. They both know this route and see each other every Sunday but neither speak. Elsie feels it’s too painful to share her silence with a woman who looks just as empty.

When the bus doors open the church bells ring and Elsie hears them calling her to John’s grave. The smell of cut grass says spring. Elsie inhales.
Her handbag swings by her side as she tries to cheer herself up with questions she’ll put to John. But she always forgets the questions, tries to remember what John would say.

‘You’ve got a head like a sieve Elsie, but that’s Ok. I’ll sort it out.’
But you never did John, did you?

When she’s unwrapping the flowers from the newsletter, Bus Woman arrives by her side. They ignore each other. Elsie places her flowers in the vase by John’s headstone then stands to leave. The woman places her flowers next to Elsie’s.

At least his headstone acknowledges me as his wife. She can’t take that away from me. God knows she took everything else.