Gem.

Immediately Gem is engaging, breathlessly sparkly and making good eye contact which is strange for me as most if not all people talk via the windscreen. You’re happy! I say with a big smile, ‘No’ she replies and sighs. ‘I’m trying to get my daughter back, she is four next month and they won’t let me see her’ My first surprise is that she was old enough to even have children, she being so small, I would have guessed her age at 14ish maybe a bit older. She is 23. ‘It’s my ex-boyfriend he hurt her while I was at work’ I took her to the doctors, not knowing… Her face is wet. ’I will get her back. He hurt her. He hurt her… I have stopped the cab for a while now, just listening.

Do I have a judgement? Do I dare? I believed her, a combination of harsh association with a vicious child man/boyfriend that stubbed cigarettes out on a child. He disappeared, left her with the burden of loss. Her family has left her with that burden too. She does not have boyfriends anymore and is at college. Her incredible fortitude and positive outlook looked unshakable, not a victim, not a ‘poor me.’

That was eight years ago.

Very recently, I saw her. A small young woman with another small young woman both exactly the same size coming out of Boots in St Leonards, was it her daughter that was with her? It was. How sure am I?  I know how mums are with their children. She was simply being a mum and my face was wet that’s how I know.

Lulu.

She puts on her own seatbelt and waves goodbye to the staff at the centre who have put her in my cab. I have taken Lulu to and from the centre for many years now. She shoves polo mints into my mouth and waves ten pound notes in front of my face to pay me when I’m driving. She cries when I hit potholes and is beside herself when there is a delay or traffic. ‘What’s your name? Is something she has asked me once a week for the last 14 years.

Today though is a special day. Today she has had a celebration. Lulu has had a party.

She has a phone, she likes the beeps and whistles it makes. She makes a call; ‘Hello? Hello? Its forty years today! Yes! I had a party! Forty years in the home! Hello? Hello? The line is dead. Ten seconds the call lasted, to her sister. Busy I suspect, our lives are busy after all. ‘What’s your name?’ She asks, I am already new to her yet again and after searching her cardigan pocket she shoves a hairy polo mint into my mouth.

See you next week Lulu.

Miguel.

Tall, tanned with a duffel bag he sits in front with me.   “I am Miguel” instantly my language centre of my brain deduces quickly that Miguel is a student, in fact, a foreign student. I say hello back, in English. Slowly.  I notice his knees are very tanned, already I’m annoyed he can get away with wearing shorts as I look stupid even standing next to a rack of shorts in a shop.  Me with my white british knees. “I love England, it is pretty” I sense he is reciting a Spanish Janet and John ‘how to speak the English’ book for the under-fives. Probably not though, last time I spoke Spanish I said “graphiarse” instead of gracias, somehow my lips got involved and both colluded to embarrass me. We are making good progress and about halfway to his destination he starts to move about in his seat to face me, he starts to stroke the side of the seat and that instantly puts me into my I-appreciate-your-gay-but-I’m-not-mode, as I am quite a catch for the younger gay men of this world. I am thinking he wants to stay in the UK with the perfect sugar daddy, which is me obviously.  It is funny what conclusions you can come to in a few seconds. “Have you want to seen my banana?” Miguel insists whilst tapping my arm and has a pout on, like they do in them ‘selfies’ you see on twitter and that Facebook. I have to stop, he’s crossed a boundary touching me and offering me his ‘banana.’ I pull over, get out and stomp around to the passenger door, open it and drag him and his tanned knees out. He is crying and wailing, not sure what he is saying but I get in and drive away. Feeling bloody miffed I can tell you, I’m always being picked on by the gays, just because I have perfect nails, lovely teeth, wear lovely clothes, wash almost every day and listen to Melody Gardot. I’m miffed me, miffed.   Much later while searching for a penny that fell out of my quite perfectly manicured hand down the side of the passenger seat, I find a bandana.  The penny dropping was perhaps a metaphor for the penny dropping in my perfectly moisturised and quaffered head. ‘Have I seen his bandana?’ is what Miguel was trying to say to me. I feel a bit daft and embarrassed; he was not trying to pull me to be his sugar daddy, he was looking for his bandana! I still have it. I wore it when I dressed as a pirate for pirate day, tied it to my sword. Very fetching.

Tony.

Quick mate! Quick! He wants me to get to a pub in the middle of town quick it seems. We arrive and park up a little distance from the pub. He is nervous, excited. We wait. Ten minutes go by. “What are we waiting for?  I whisper so the people in the pub 50yds away cannot hear me. “My children…” he gagged back a cry. “ I’m losing my children.” He was talking to himself and was getting more agitated as he stared at the pub door. Twenty minutes go by.  A woman comes out and lights a cigarette, he tenses, and she is clearly the person we have been waiting for. A couple of minutes later a man joins her, cuddles then kisses her grabbing her arse as he does. Tony is breathing heavy “My wife…” he is whispering to himself… My children…I’m losing my children” he then explodes out of the cab and runs at the kissing couple. Screaming. Pushing. A scene. I leave.  I leave because weeks earlier this same woman tore at my clothes demanding sex. I obliged. I didn’t ask if she was married, I didn’t ask if she had children. I feel sick. I never gave a thought.  I was single. I saw this man’s life fall apart. I took part in his downfall and watched it finally fall apart. He was whispering prophetically his own future moments earlier, the future where he sees his children at the weekends, where he over compensates with them at every opportunity, a future where his home is probably a dingy flat. He saw that future sitting next to me in the cab. I stopped women calling upon me to scratch their itches; I refused from then on to shape someone's sombre future. I have seen Tony in the park with his lovely kids, he was laughing and happy, but I knew at 5pm, he takes them back to the woman that has sex with complete strangers.

Eileen

Her speech impediment makes it hard for me to understand her. You have to listen hard. In her late sixties and having spent, many years locked in her own home, away from the frightening outside world. She is now going to shows and taking part in community excursions, making friends. She pointed to a balcony on the second floor of the flats, on it, she grows herbs and flowers and especially strawberries. She loves strawberries. As we pull up to the entrance, she stutters violently and shakes and I hold her hand and ask what is making her so upset. Her neighbours spit on her herbs and strawberries from the next-door balcony, they pour beer and stub cigarettes into her herb pots. Laughing. Shouting. Poking fun at her speech. She hears them from her living room cackling like hyenas. She struggles to tell me she is being bullied. She is looking to move to a chalet type bungalow, small but with a small garden and this lit up her face. I watch her wave the electronic key at the door and it buzzed open. I sit outside, furious, watching and willing the hyenas to come out, Eileen is already on her balcony scanning her little pots and quickly disappears back in again. There is nothing I can do but stare up at the dirty net curtains of the hyena’s lair. I reluctantly leave. I am a working man and have to go to my next fare who is now wondering where I am. I do go back, slow to a crawl, sometimes park and look up. Today everything looks fine. Maybe I’ll pop back tomorrow. Maybe.

Karen.

I almost gave up waiting when a well-dressed, well-groomed young woman appeared with a small luggage case on wheels. She has been in the secure unit for six months. “We have to go and get my dog” so off we go to get her dog. She tells me she has been sectioned before and because of that, when the argument occurred with her boyfriend they locked her up again. She is worried, “What if my dog doesn’t recognise me? “What if he has been given a new home”? We arrived at the kennels that is some distance from the town. Karen has been in the office for some time and decides to stand outside. She needs to be outside. Way across the huge yard a dog is being walked and he is barking, Karen notices and is now moving from the door. The dog, a good 150 yards away is going nuts and is let go by its walker and runs across the vast yard. “Jimmy! Karen shouts, the dog is barking/crying as it missiles towards her. They meet in a dust cloud in the yard, both in the dirt, both shrieking with joy. Karen is on her back being washed by Jimmy, immaculate clothing not so anymore. A scene of happiness of such I rarely see in real life. It took an age to calm them both down enough to get them in the cab. Jimmies tail never missed a beat the whole journey. Karen only had the £4.20 she was sectioned with and my meter said £19.80 but that was ok. I took it and was happy with it. Karen saw me crying in the yard but that was ok as well.