I cross the road and examine the timetables. Yup, sure enough. I could wait five minutes for the 66, then get off in town, with a bit of luck there could be a number 5 bus at five to seven. A fair walk from the hospital, but manageable. I could be home by 7.30.

I glance up, thinking that’s the number 13 going past up to Chantry. Then I look again. No. Not the number 13, but the number 3. Well, that’s weird. I thought the number 3 service had stopped. There was a big outcry in the local papers when the service discontinued. It had been merged with the number 4, but the number 4 didn’t go past the hospital, and now all these poor old pensioners at Broke Hall, who no longer had a car, had to catch two buses to make the mile and a half journey to Ipswich’s Heath Road hospital.

I missed the number 3 service after it stopped running. It used to be if my regular bus didn’t turn up for some reason I would hop round the corner and get the number 3. My regular bus didn’t turn up ... er... regularly. Very handy it was. A shame it discontinued. Surely it couldn’t be going again? And surely it never came to the station even when it was running?

The driver’s pulled up. He’s got the engine running, reading a paper, and smoking a fag. Chubby looking fellow with a bulldog face. I laugh a little because from sideways on he looks a bit like John Prescott. Not quite sure why I find that funny though, except knowing that John Prescott’s mandarins, as they call them at the government offices, had promised to look into the termination of the number 3 service. Mandarins! I call them tangerines.

Anyway, now I’ve got someone who looks just like the Secretary of State for Transport driving my bus home.

Well, I thought it was funny, anyway.

"Goin’ up the hospital?" I say, still not really sure it’s the number 3. Perhaps he was just a bit careless while flagging up the signs, like.

He doesn’t look up from the paper, but he sort of grunts, and I decide that’s a yes. I hop on, flash him my weekly pass that he doesn’t bother to look at, then stride down the empty aisle to the end of the bus.

I sit in the back row, because that’s where I always used to want to sit when I went on a bus to high school, and there’s still something of a big kid in me that always wants to sit on the very back seat.

We wait for a while, the John Prescott look-alike and me, but no-one else gets on after five minutes, so Bulldog Face folds up his paper and grinds through the gears. The bus jerks into motion, and off we go.

I sit back, thinking it won’t be long now until I’m home. Just as well, because I’m knackered. Doing a new job tires you out.

Outside it’s dark. A typical blustery November evening. I see some familiar streets in Ipswich passing by. The bus goes over the river bridge, up past the football ground (a great win on Monday night against Charlton, lads. Maybe you weren’t up to your usual high standards, but it was the result that was important. A last-gasp goal in the final minute of the game was good enough for us.)

We pass the police station, then swing into the bus station at Tower Ramparts. Odd, there’s people about, but no-one gets on. That’s a bit strange. I’ve never seen any bus arrive at that bus station without people getting on before, but then I normally travel during the peak hours. Oh well.

Bulldog-Face waits there for about five minutes, then off we go again. This time, I know the route. Past the Odeon, up Spring Road. Up towards Lattice Barn. Swing round Woodbridge Road east roundabout. Past the hospital. There’s always someone who gets on at the hospital.

Sure enough, there’s a queue. On they come. One, two, three, four... sad people with long raincoats and sturdy boots and hats. Nearly always the same, regardless of whether they’re patients or hospital visitors. They have that downtrodden, worn-down look about them, shoulders sagging, carrying a bag, sometimes, with the heavy tread of the unlucky and the weary, they step slowly onto the bus, and shuffle down the aisle, not looking left or right, but at the seat where they intend to sit. Then they sit gingerly, as though not even sure they have permission to sit there.

It’s raining heavily, and the wind is buffeting. They all wear hats and watch the ground as they walk.

There’s more of these hospital people than you might expect. Probably more than 20. I’ve got my cheque-book out by now because I forgot to fill in my stub earlier today, and then I got distracted, thinking about my budget for this month, and going through my cheque-book, trying to figure out my balance. But I look up, because I’m surprised at how many people get on.

Still, eventually, there’s no more people standing there waiting to get on, and away the bus goes off again. Up towards the Bixley Road roundabout, and then left into Foxhall Road.

Okay, count the stops. One, two, three. This will do me. I ring the bell.

Bastard doesn’t stop. He drives straight through it. So I ring the bell again, and when he doesn’t look as if he’ll stop for that one, I shout down the aisle.

"Can you stop, please?"

As one, all these sad people who got on at the hospital look round, as if to see who this person is who’s causing so much trouble. They’re a conventional, tongue-clucking lot who normally look at anyone who causes the slightest upset, so I shouldn’t be surprised, except... their faces....

They all have hats on, and I don’t know why I didn’t notice their faces before. Or maybe their faces just looked like normal faces before. But these aren’t normal faces now. These are the faces of dead people, in varying stages of decay. Some bruised, some with the flesh rotting away. Some with the hair and teeth falling away as well. And some with just skeletons’ skulls, empty sockets, devoid of eyeballs, all turned in my direction.

I don’t know what’s happened. I suppose I remember that the number 3 is discontinued. It fleetingly occurs to me this is not a real bus after all. It’s a ghost bus. And the John Prescott look-alike is not a real driver. He’s a symbol for a driver. Perhaps this is like the equivalent of the Ferryman taking all the hospital’s dead to their next destination. And I’m going there as well.

I grab the handle of the emergency exit. It’s only right next door to me. I hear the buzzer activate immediately, and pull the handle. The door flies open, tugged by the fierce wind and I lose my balance.

Out... I’m falling, onto wet Tarmac.

The headlights, the horn. I notice them at once. I stare, but I can’t move out the way. I know the car’s going to hit me, and it does.

The impact is massive. Everything spins. I think my body is flung up into the air against the bonnet, then I slip down, and my head smacks on the concrete kerbstone with a crack. I stare upwards, seeing the street light, knowing the dark night sky behind it, somewhere behind the orange haze. An orange haze shaped round like a spherical halo.

I hear the car, and I suppose I realise it has stopped. Several cars have stopped, and people are running up to me, staring down. Someone touches my neck for a pulse.

"Is she - ?"

"I think she’s alive, but she looks in a bad way."

Bad way? But I don’t feel particularly bad. I don’t feel particularly anything. Not cold, not hot, no pain. Actually, I feel like giggling.

And then I hear the first voice again, and think that’s the driver of the car that hit me.

"Where on earth did she come from? I never saw her at all. It was literally as though she stepped out of thin air..."