Dark Tales competition - Winner

The shadow creeps along the living room wall inch by inch until it obliterates any remaining light of the day.
 I hold my breath and listen, waiting for the familiar hiss of the hydraulic suspension, and the final shuddering of its twelve-tonne frame. I wander over to the window in the same lazy, apathetic manner that I’ve done every Friday at six o’clock for the last few weeks. I watch as the doors whoosh open, the driver hops off. Searches briefly, opens a secret compartment, locks the doors. There are no passengers to alight. The night bus to London has arrived.
The interior lights in the bus have dimmed to an energy-saving acid green. I can see myself reflected in the top deck windows, and behind me the early-evening news is playing out on my TV. Greasy ribbons of hair lie on my shoulders, hollow eyes look back at me. I look old and tired. I am 21.
I can hear Martha mewing from her cot, but she will have to wait. She seems to be hungry all the time since we moved here. She’s only eight weeks old, but milk alone doesn’t seem to satisfy her now. It’s not surprising. When the Tandoori Palace below us fire up their kiln, the sweet smell of onions and chicken permeates the whole flat, making both of our stomachs rumble. Maybe I’ll put some baby cereal in with her milk, bulk it out, fill her up. That’s what my Nan told me she did with me and my sisters. That and gin. No Netmums police in those days.
Tesco Express is empty. I turn over the reduced items – shrivelled broccoli, grey bacon, multi packs of low-fat yoghurt – all with garish yellow stickers offering 25% off. The baby cereal is expensive and takes the last of my money. As I feed the coins into the self-service checkout, I slide a Twix into the sleeve of my jumper, the one my Nan knitted me for Christmas last year. Outside, I stand and look up at the rain-splattered windows of my first floor flat, the bare bulb hanging and the light of the TV flickering. The bus blocks the bedroom window. If there were passengers upstairs, they would be able to look in on where Martha is lying, crying. But the bus is empty, sleeping.
The kids on bikes have arrived. They pull their hoods up and do wheelies around the precinct. Every so often one of them breaks off, heads towards the night bus, circles it, and returns to base. They are here every night, this is their playground, their theatre.
Standing again at my window, with the light turned off, I watch and wait. The bus driver is back now, sitting in his cab with a fish supper. The light from his phone illuminates his greasy beard. It looks like he is watching porn, but I could be wrong. There is almost an hour to go until the bus leaves, before it takes away a few more of the diminishing population of this town. Auntie Sue has lost all of her children to the night bus. The boys went first, one every year. She tried to hang on to Gracie as long as she could. She promised her the world, but the boys promised her more.
Gracie works for a property company now, she Instagrams selfies of herself on building sites. She wears power suits and a bright yellow hard hat, except on Fridays when she wears jeans and a hard hat. We were always the closest cousins and I miss her, but I don’t miss the Gracie I see in the pictures. I don’t know that Gracie.
Martha is lying next to me on the settee. Her eyes squint as she tries to focus on the glare from the light-bulb. Milky lumps of cereal slide from the corner of her mouth. I try to sit her up, but she’s not strong enough yet and just flops sideways. She’s wearing a pink Babygro with ‘Daddy’s Little Princess’ written on it. I bought it from the charity shop. Martha has no Daddy.
The politicians are on the TV again, arguing about Brexit, about how we are all going to be worse off. It won’t matter in this town. Things can’t get any worse. I flick through the channels and find an old Friends episode. Gracie and I used to sit on her bed and watch back to back episodes. I was Rachel and she was Phoebe. I had nice hair back then. Maybe when I get some money I’ll go to the hairdressers, get my hair done. Have some highlights, get a spray tan like I did for the school prom. My nan still has a photo of me on her sideboard, dressed in a billowing pink Katie Price ballgown, laughing, trying to get into the limo. I don’t remember what it felt like to be sixteen anymore.
Raised voices out in the street draw me back to the window. Folding myself in the shadows of the thin, nicotine-drenched curtains, I watch as a squaddie argues with a taxi driver over the cost of his fare. He wants to hit him. You can see the pent-up rage in his face, the twitch in his left eye, the balled fist pinned to his side. Swearing, he throws a bank note at him, and swings his kit bag over his shoulder, almost knocking one of the boys off their bike. He’ll take the night bus and get far away from here. He needs to kill someone in the name of the Queen.
The emergency electric has run out again. I light some candles that I found in the cupboard under the sink when I moved in. They were grey and greasy and half-burned away but I’m glad I kept them. There will be no more money until Friday. I’ll have to steal what I need till then, but I can’t steal electric top-up. Maybe I’ll take some pretty candles, some glittery tea lights and put them in jam jars and tie ribbons round them like people do at weddings. I saw that in a magazine.
Martha is sleeping now it’s dark. I lift her from the settee and put her in the cot. I think I’m supposed to bath her and change her, but I don’t. She opens her eyes and looks at me briefly, a sad, knowing look. She emits a small sigh, closes her eyes and sleeps again. I suddenly think that she doesn’t look like a Martha. I don’t know why I chose the name. I could call her something else instead, she wouldn’t know. I’ve never spoken her name to her.
The night bus starts up and the lights flash thorough the upper deck like lightening, illuminating my room. I should draw the curtains, but without the TV, it’s the only distraction I have. The driver has lifted the doors on the luggage compartment and is heaving flowered  suitcases, flight bags and a backpack the size of a fridge into the chasm. The boys on the bikes are hanging around, knuckles blue from the cold, getting in the way, glad of an opportunity to annoy people and laugh loudly about it. They pass a spliff between themselves, like a baton in a relay race. I recognise some of them from the estate where I grew up. They’re older now, baby faces grown gaunt, innocent eyes now hooded and suspicious. Their brothers' hand me down clothes hang on their skinny frames.
There’s only fifteen minutes left till the bus leaves. Cars are pulling up – youngsters with bright eyes jump out, chattering excitedly, oblivious to the pain on their parents’ faces. The father hands them money, the mother hands them sandwiches. It’s always the same. Once the bus has gone they will stand together in the street and hug, walk back to their car with drooped shoulders, head back home to start their old age.
Others are gathered around the bus now – there’s an air of excitement, it’s palpable, even through the window. I watch as they board the bus and climb the stairs – lanky lads looking for seats with leg room, girls with travel pillows and puzzle magazines. There’s still lots of empty seats though.
Over by the precinct a girl about my age has arrived. She is sitting on the bench with her bags around her feet and is talking into her phone, gesticulating wildly, arguing with someone, a soon to be ex-boyfriend probably. She stands occasionally and paces up and down, her left-hand twisting and pulling tendrils of hair as she walks. I slip outside and study her from the shelter of an alley. It’s starting to drizzle with rain, so I pull my hood up and wander over towards the shops. No one notices me – I’m anonymous, just another feral street-dweller. I watch the girl carefully and count her paces up and down from the bench. On her next turn, her handbag is mine and I am gone before she even knows I exist.
Standing again at my window I watch as she starts to gather up her things. I can see the confusion in her body language, her head swinging from side to side, trying to work out what’s wrong, what’s missing.
I’m sitting on the upper deck of the bus. I watch through the window across the aisle as the police question the boys on the bikes about the missing bag. I can hear the girl downstairs, begging the driver to let her on without her ticket, pleading with him to wait while the police sort it out. He says he must leave on time, that he’ll lose his job if he doesn’t. She won’t be going anywhere tonight. My rucksack is on my lap and I slide my hand inside it to stroke her soft leather purse, to wind her silk scarf around my fingers, to pinch the crisp, cashpoint fresh, banknotes. The bus is almost empty, and its few occupants have already hunkered down, headphones in, eyes closed. It will fill little by little as it snakes its way through the oppressed towns of the North East, stealing the brightest of the children, calling them away like the Pied Piper. It can steal me too, now.
The bus rocks as the driver slams shut the luggage doors, climbs into his cab. The engine purrs into action, and again, the hiss of the hydraulics signals the next chapter in a journey.
I look across to Martha. The light through the window throws grey shadows onto her face and she looks like stone – that she will sleep for a hundred years. As the bus slowly pulls away, the window slides out of view and she is gone.