The bun was gone now, every crumb pecked up greedily from the path, and the birds flew off, their eyes fixed on an old man who had just arrived on the next bench, providing another likely source of food. Prue screwed up the paper bag and dropped it inside her empty cup, popped the lid back on and took it to an overflowing rubbish bin. It was no good dwelling on what was gone. She was twenty-four, and she had let too many years slip by. There was no her and Joe. Not any more. Not in the way she had wanted anyway. She had watched him go off to uni, been proud of him, and excused his long absences and his long silences as necessary if he was to do well, work hard, study hard. Had he played hard too? She would never know. She had believed only what she’d wanted to believe, seen only what she’d wanted to see, and heard … well, what? She had certainly never heard him say he loved her. Because he didn’t love her, and he probably never had. That was so blindingly obvious now.

She went back out through the gate to the street and spotted another bus approaching. Without any time to work out where it might take her, she ran to the stop and jumped on board. What was the point of being in London and telling herself she was going to change her life if she couldn’t act on impulse and just hop on a passing bus and see where she ended up?

‘Sorry, love.’ The driver sniffed at the fiver she held out towards him. ‘We don’t take cash these days. Oyster?’

Prue shook her head. She hadn’t had time to think about getting herself a travel card, but no cash? Really? How could a bus not take cash?

‘Or a contactless card’ll do. Got one of those?’

She rummaged about in her purse, feeling her face redden, wishing her research into bus routes had expanded into working out how to pay, but thankful at least that there was no queue behind her waiting impatiently to board. She found her bank card and touched it on the round yellow pad the driver was pointing at. The beep noise seemed to satisfy him. He nodded, and she walked down the bus and found herself a seat as he drove back out into the traffic, narrowly missing a cyclist who stuck two fingers up in the air as he clung to the handlebars one-handedly and wobbled out into the centre of the road.

The man sitting in front of her was tall, his head bent over a newspaper, his dark brown hair skimming his collar at the back. She caught her breath. He looked so much like Joe she had to fight the urge to reach out and touch him. But as he turned his head to look out of the window she saw that he really didn’t look like Joe at all. He was about ten years older for a start, and dark skinned, and he was wearing glasses. Prue shook her thoughts away. Silly, silly, silly … Joe was miles away, and she couldn’t conjure him up at will, much as she might like to.