Every bus has cameras on both decks that record whenever the ignition is on, and for an hour after, for the insurers. Bus nine's top deck camera records after its last run, in the yard, locked, for the hour. There is a passenger in it. Front seat, top deck, nearside, the seat every child wants. They sit and look out of the window at the yard for the hour, and the downstairs camera records an empty bus, and the doors have not opened.
I am the CCTV reviewer at a bus depot, which is a job that exists because of insurance claims, and bus nine's after hours footage is the only footage I have ever watched twice.
The cameras.
Four on every double decker. Two downstairs, two up. They record with the ignition and for an hour after it goes off, so an incident at the end of a shift is covered. The footage is pulled if there is a claim and otherwise it is overwritten, and I am the one who pulls it.
Nine's top deck front camera records a passenger after its last run.
The passenger.
A child. I will say that first. A child of about eight, in a coat, in the front nearside seat on the top deck, which is the seat you fight your brother for, sitting up on their knees the way children do to see out, looking out of the window at the yard. For the hour. The bus is in its bay, locked, the driver has gone, the yard is dark except for the lights on the sheds, and the child looks out of the window at it as if it were the best view in the world.
The downstairs cameras show an empty bus. The doors do not open on any camera. The stairs camera does not record anybody going up.
At the end of the hour the recording stops, because that is when it stops, and the child is still there when it does.
What has been checked.
The camera, replaced. The child is on the new camera.
The bus, by me, at the end of its last run, in the yard, up the stairs, front seat. Nobody. I sat in the seat and looked out of the window at the yard, and it is a yard, and the recording that night has me in the seat and, beside me, in the aisle seat, the child, looking past me out of the window, and I did not feel a thing, not cold, not anything, and I do not know whether that is better or worse.
The driver on nine. Has driven it for eleven years. Has never seen anything. Says the top deck front seat is always warm when he checks the bus at the end, which he has put down to the heater, and the heater is not on the top deck.
Who.
I do not know and I have not been able to find out. There is no incident with a child on nine or on its route. There is no record of anything. I asked the drivers who have been here longest and they had nothing, and I looked at the papers, and there was nothing.
I have come to think that it is not a child who died on a bus. I think it is a child who loved the bus. Who sat in that seat, on that route, going somewhere ordinary, and it was the best part of the day, and whatever happened to them afterwards, in whatever year, it was not on the bus, and the bus was the place they were happy, and they have gone back to it.
They do not ride it. They sit in it, in the yard, after the last run, with the engine off, looking out at the sheds, for an hour. It is a child sitting on a bus that has stopped, waiting for it to go again.
What is done about it.
The footage is overwritten, as all of it is, and there is no claim, and there never will be, and I have kept one hour of it on a drive in my desk, which is against policy, and I am not going to delete it.
What I do.
I review the footage.
I asked the driver on nine to do something, and he did it, because he is a kind man and he did not ask why. At the end of the last run, in the yard, before he locks up and goes, he goes up the stairs, to the front, and he says, to the empty seat, that's us for tonight, back in the morning, and he goes down.
The footage has changed by a minute. The child sits and looks out at the yard for the hour, as before. But at the start, when the driver comes up and says it, the child turns from the window and looks at him, for the time it takes him to say it, and nods, and turns back, the way a child nods at a grown up who has said a thing that does not need answering and turns back to what matters, which is the window.
And in the morning, when the driver takes nine out for its first run, the front seat on the top deck is warm, and the first passenger to go up there and take it, most mornings, is a child on the way to school, and the driver says that they always seem pleased with it, and I have watched that footage too, and they do.