He drew in at the side of the road, coming to rest immediately abreast of the woman. She stepped smartly to the back door and climbed in. He watched her in his rear-view mirror; a well-off woman, he thought; well-dressed, carrying a small leather briefcase.

“Where to?” he asked. He had not rehearsed the phrase, but it sounded right.

She told him that she wanted to go to the bank at the top of the Mall. “I have an appointment,” she said. “I am a bit late for it. I hope that you can get me there quickly.”

He shifted the car into gear and drove off. “I will do my best, Mma.”

In the mirror he saw the woman in the back relax. “A friend was coming to collect me,” she said, looking out of the window as she spoke. “She has obviously forgotten. It was a good thing you came along.”

“Yes, Mma. We are here to help.”

The woman seemed impressed with this. “Some of you taxi people are really rude,” she said. “You are not like that. That is a good thing.”

Charlie looked in the mirror again, his eyes meeting his passenger’s gaze. She was a good-looking woman, he thought; a bit too old for him, but one never knew. That last time, when he had been involved with that older woman, he had enjoyed a marvellous time, until her husband…Well, one could never tell how these things would work out. He glanced into the mirror once more. She was wearing a necklace with green stones and a pair of large dangling ear-rings. Charlie liked ear-rings like that. They were a sign that a woman liked a good time, he always thought. Perhaps he might ask this woman at the end of the journey whether he could come back and pick her up after her appointment. And she would say to him that this would be a very good idea because, as it happened, she had nothing to do and perhaps they could go out to a bar somewhere and have a beer because it was getting hot again, did he not think, and it would be a good thing to say goodbye to these winter nights when one really needed somebody nice and warm in one’s bed to keep the chill away…