“Where do you live?” he asked, hauling his satchel up the hill of skulking houses. “Billy’d like to meet you.”
“I go this way.” I gestured in the opposite direction. “Sorry. Rush. Maybe next time.”
He smiled, shrugged. He twisted his tie, like a price tag dangling from the last chicken in the shop. I watched him up the hill, in small steps, his left shoelace flapping, past a tiny end terrace, into a grey-slabbed gennel. Thank God I’d shaken this no-hoper. Getting to Oxford, becoming a financier, I needed friends worth knowing, families with the pathways to the racing-green Jag and the lakeside farmhouse, not plebs with whippets and Hornby Dublo. The next time, the 83 was an accident. I was euphoric: the sky was blue as The Maundy’s blazer, the June sun as brilliant as me. My revision plan had worked, my GCSEs had been so much easier than I’d expected. Unfortunately my success fogged my eyes. I misread the bus number, and was rolling towards a seat before I realised it was the wrong bus.

That same little oik was sitting in the same corner, clutching another Lucozade bottle, chewing on his rag of a tie. He waved at me, across the bus. I didn’t see him, of course. I buried myself in A level Economics. Give him a word and he’d take a mile. I left the bus at the stop before his, thinking the long way home in the burning sun a fair punishment for stupidity.