The Woman At The Bus Stop Was Wearing My Coat, And I Was Wearing My Coat

It was a coat I had owned for six years, from a shop that no longer exists, and it had a missing second button, and a biro stain on the right cuff from a pen that leaked on a train in 2019.

She was standing at the bus stop opposite. Same coat. Missing second button. And when she lifted her hand to push her hair back, there was the biro mark, in the shape I know, because I have looked at that mark every day for years.

She was not me. I want to be clear. She was maybe fifty, and she was blonde, and she had a face like nobody I know.

I crossed the road. I do not know why I crossed the road. Everything in me was saying do not cross the road.

I said, "Excuse me — where did you get your coat?"

She looked at me. She looked at my coat. And she said, with a completely ordinary, mildly puzzled smile: "Same place as you, I expect."

The bus came. She got on it. It was not my bus.

I stood there for a long time.

Here is my rational explanation, which I offer sincerely: it was a chain-store coat, thousands were made, buttons fall off in the same place because that is where the strain is, and biro marks on cuffs are the most common stain in the world.

That is a genuinely good explanation. I have leaned on it for two years.

But here is what I have never been able to reconcile with it, and it is the reason I am writing this down.

I got home that evening and my coat was on the hook.

I was wearing it. I was wearing my coat. I had worn it all day. I hung it up.

And there was another one on the hook, underneath it. Same coat. Missing second button.

My flatmate says I bought two, years ago, in a sale, and that I have simply forgotten, and honestly — honestly — that is probably true.

I have thrown them both away.