He trundled his toy bus along his thigh and then along the rubber window seal, a tiny double-decker framed within a real double-decker, if anyone on the streets had cared to look up.

‘Paddington Station,’ my mother said as the signs came into view. ‘Let’s look out for Paddington Bear.’ This too was one of our new rituals, a minute or more of predictable distraction on the 27 bus, Michael cupping his hands to the glass, binoculars searching for Paddington.

But on this trip we saw a dead punk instead. A dead junkie punk, his faded skinny jeans k-legged on the pavement at the traffic lights, his studded denim jacket splayed open, his skin white as paper, hair dyed carrot-orange. People were standing around looking down at him, hands in their pockets, treating him less like a person and more like a metaphor, or an art project that wasn’t quite working. Maybe he was long past helping and they knew it and were a kind of low-key honour guard stopping him from being stepped on while the ambulance trundled towards them through the traffic without hurry.

‘He’s just resting,’ my mother said, reaching from the seat behind to turn Michael by the shoulders so that he looked elsewhere for everyone’s favourite Peruvian bear. ‘I wonder how old that is?’

She was pointing at something ahead of us – a building, a statue, any random thing that wasn’t a newly dead human.

Michael twisted his head back to the punk. ‘He’s done a wee. He’s a grown-up.’

‘Actually, is that Paddington Bear?’ I said, pointing towards the pedestrians on the other side of the lights. ‘With the Brown family?’

He whipped his head around. ‘Where? Where?’

The lights changed, the bus jerked forward, the punk was gone, with Michael scanning the crowd the length of the next block.

My mother sat back in her seat, one hand still on Michael’s shoulder until she was certain the search for Paddington had his full attention. She exhaled and opened her eyes wide.

‘Well, there’s a new bus game,’ I said to her.

‘What?’

I put on a stage whisper. ‘Spot the dead punk.’

She put on a look of exasperation. ‘You’ve just saved it. Don’t unsave it.’

Michael peeled his face from the window. ‘What? Saved what?’

‘Saved you from double-decker buses.’ I took his bus from his hand and drove it over his head. ‘Nooo. Nooo.’

He laughed. ‘No, bus, no.’

‘Not on his head,’ my mother said. ‘His hair might get caught in the wheels.’

I drove it down his arm and back to the window seal, where he took over, making engine noises and then the screech of brakes as it pulled up at the end.