From Edinburgh, Scotland: "The last Etruscan" [a Top Ten Bus Stories nominee]. (Not Reading On the Bus)

For many weeks, before Christmas, there was a young woman who got on the bus a few stops along from me who, despite her softly rounded features, neat plaits and pink hair clips, always seemed regally self-possessed.  Perhaps it was something in the straight-shouldered way she carried herself, or her complete lack of interest in the other passengers.

Her interest was always outside the bus, at least for the first few yards, when she would be looking intently out the window for the skinny young man with the sparse moustache who would be waiting at the B&B just along the road from the bus stop.  On dry days he would be on the steps; if the weather was very wet, he would be standing inside, looking out the bay window with its small sign hanging from a chain that always said: ‘vacancies’.

(Read more here.)