Tilly sat on the bus. It was her first trip in years. The smells surprise her, after years of car travel, her own little world of warmth and peppermints. The bus is a miasma of over-applied cheap perfume and body odour. Her last trip in the late eighties had been an assault of cigarette smoke, sometimes hairspray, which always worried her. Hair lacquer being so flammable. 

    Her car had abandoned her only weeks after her husband had. Mark had put on his coat after dinner and had said simply, “I’m off then,” picking up the small suitcase by the back door. She hadn’t even noticed it. A horrible tartan thing in green and blue. Campbell tartan? They weren’t even popular amongst the Scottish. The closest Mark had got to Scotland was the biscuit tin he presided over at Christmas. Butter shortbread. 

     Now Tilly took the bus to work, alongside harassed mothers and haunted young men. Today the bloke in the seat in front of her gave off a strange smell of something sweet and rotten. Human compost. If he sat here long enough, he may well sink into a heap.  The bus shuddered to a halt. Not her stop yet, two more to go.

     “Morning,” the human compost heap had risen, like Jesus. He looked a bit like Jesus, but with a rolled-up newspaper under his arm and only a hint of a holy beard. Tilly nodded in greeting as he moved towards the middle doors. But he looked clean as he left the bus, taking the steps jauntily, down into the world.  The man who had sat next to him turned and grinned at her. No front teeth. The sweet rotting smell prevailed.

     The walk to the bus stop from work was longer than she’d ever imagined when she’d driven it, especially in the rain. Her umbrella was still in the footwell of her Astra, crushed up into square metal. Hanging by a crane no doubt. Pity her husband wasn’t still in it. Folded in a squashed heap, rather than leaning over Mary from the fruit shop, in her dingy little flat above the store. Turns out her hapless flirting had been just for him, not every man who came into her store. Tilly had to walk to the other side of town for her fruit and veg now. Trying to find her usual compassion she pushed down spite and popped a chewy mint into her mouth.

     It had been a good day. Tilly loved her job, making people look good for the last time. Choosing outfits with the bereaved. A subtle dress, a smart suit, nothing too funereal, but nothing clown-like.  

     The bus trip home always felt a little lighter. The fact that she was going home again, and the bus was filled with professional workers like herself. Her raincoat was wet around the shoulders, her hair a cold damp helmet. She should think about having a colour to lift it. Sharon, her hairdresser, always called it that. ‘A lift darling, that’s what you need’. As if that would change anything. Make better life choices, stop the bile rising inside her. 

    She’d nipped into the supermarket on the way home, her reusable plastic bag contained a couple of ready meals to see out the week. Tilly took great pleasure in piercing the tight film and popping it in the microwave. Mark hated microwaves. He liked freshly cooked, not that he did anything in the kitchen. Mary had better like cooking after a day on her feet weighing potatoes. Tilly smiled, and the woman across the aisle who was still wearing her plastic rain hat smiled back in solidarity. 

     Next day the sun was shining. It shone in through the bus windows, filtered through the dirt. The smiling woman from yesterday patted her seat before sitting down. A cloud of dust escaped causing the man in the seat in front to sneeze. Best leave the dust there, Tilly thought, and sneezed herself. The bus driver wasn’t the usual morning one. He was young. Looked too young to drive. He whistled a tuneless unrecognisable song. It made Tilly feel warm inside, and outside because of the sun. Her dad had been a whistler. His favourite song, which he whistled daily, was The Sun Has Got His Hat On. Hip-hip-hip hooray thought Tilly as she rescued her book from her bag. She placed it on her knee, looked out of the window. Mary’s overblown come-hither breasts. Her long over bleached hair which sometimes dipped into the green beans as she shovelled them into paper bags. Large cheap gold earrings that made her look like a cut price fortune teller. After six months Tilly was starting to emerge from the control of her ill-chosen husband. Mark was graced with the good looks he thought would get him through life. Golden blond hair, chiselled jaw, clear blue eyes. She’d done the choosing of course. Mark was a beautiful man on the outside, but he had a shrivelled soul. Perfect for his job as a financial advisor. Satisfied, Tilly picked up her book. 

     It was still bright and warm as Tilly made her way to the bus stop again that evening. She toyed with getting off the bus a stop or two earlier to make the most of the weather. She decided she wouldn’t. Mark had called her, halfway through a tricky part of her work. She’d sworn under her breath.

     “I was wondering if I could pick up the rest of my stuff,” he said.

     His stuff had been sitting in a cardboard box in the utility room since the week after he’d slipped out the back door. It wasn’t much. A football trophy from his school days. Tilly suspected it was a participation medal as he’d never shown any sporting prowess. Old books and attempts at creative writing. He’d attended night classes at the community centre for a while, had read his pointless poetry to her while she begrudgingly cooked their evening meal. His words quotidian, no rhythm to them 

     “Sure.” Tilly murmured.

     “Saturday morning then?” without even checking if she was free. She was free. Free as a bird. They agreed on 10 o’clock. 

     There wasn’t much to pick up after ten years of marriage. Mark had moved in with her, with nothing much to his name. The furniture was hers, the electrical goods too. She’d stored the microwave in the loft and had rescued it the week after Mark left. Tilly no longer cooked, just waited for a ping, more rhythmic than Mark’s poetry. No Saturday morning trips to the fish market to buy Mark’s haddock. No one to tell her what to do.

     Homeward bound in full sunshine. The newspapers called it a heatwave. The country wasn’t made for the heat. On the bus men were jamming their fingers into too tight collars. Women in summer finery. Dresses usually unworn hung at the back of the back of the wardrobe. Now they were out and proud, bright colours shouting at each other across the gangway. A middle-aged woman in teal stood out, tears coursing silently down her face. A failed office romance? Tilly didn’t wear a light summer frock, it would be considered unprofessional and frivolous. She wore a neat navy skirt, teamed with a light cotton blouse in white or grey. Flat pumps, no tights, that was her contribution to England in the heat. She carried a matching suit jacket in case it got cool. The air-conditioning could be fierce in her line of work. She put on her white coat before starting work. The surgical smell in the room, on her clothes, her hair. 

     Mark had come around on Saturday morning as he’d threatened, surprised at how neatly Tilly had piled up his cartons of things. She didn’t think he’d expected that. Or that she had the microwave out. She’d been tempted to light up a cigarette to annoy him further, but she hadn’t smoked in years. Tilly considered chewing gum, twirling it around her fingers defiantly while she listened to him drone on about his job, his life. Not mentioning Mary once, but Tilly knew. She could almost smell the beetroot on him. 

     Monday morning, three weeks after taking the bus, Tilly noticed a pattern to the way people sat. Smiling woman on the side seat, compost and toothless near the back, a huddle of unhappy youth nearby, smelling of desperation and Lynx Africa. Professionals near the front and side exists, to be near the doors. One man in a suit opened up his newspaper, the same one that had announced the heatwave, and a front-page splash about a local paedophile who had moved into the area. He stared daggers at anyone who tried to sit next to him, trying to keep his seat free. Should have bought a broadsheet, not a tabloid. Even Tilly sat in more or less the same seat. She’d had to remove gum with an old receipt from the back of the seat in front of her more than once.

     Tilly was tired. Dealing with Mark over the weekend had exhausted her. His controlling manner was still there but she was learning how to deflect it. Tilly fell asleep, her face sliding slowly down the dusty window. She woke up at the bus stop before her own. A small crowd of schoolchildren were laughing at her face, distorted by the window, from a bus stop. Part Munch, part stroke. She could smell mint. There was chewing gum in her hair. Her life was dropping again, since Mark, dripping like stalactites. But she would not have to see him again. Tilly was finally letting him go. She didn’t feel the tears that ran slowly down her face. The man beside her fidgeted bringing her awareness to the present. Not tears of heartbreak but of resignation. Time to move on.

     Now it was raining again, and Tilly still didn’t have a brolly. Her client today was a woman in her forties, with lovely hair. Waves of red curling around her head. Tilly had used deft brushstrokes on her cheekbones, a neutral lip shade, nothing to scare the mourners. Working with the dead meant you could never block it out, not entirely. 

     Every morning death waited for her, in chilled drawers with identifying tags on their toes. What had this woman died of? Did she have a grieving husband? Children? It didn’t really matter. Here and now Tilly would make her beautiful. Holding a photograph given to her she would make sure that the deceased woman would look as close to the one that had walked the earth. 

     Tilly behaved with respect and dignity. Her client would never see these acts of kindness. But she was good at her job. That much Tilly was sure.