When I get on the bus in a morning it’s usually pretty empty, but fills up on the way into Bradford, so I generally sit near the back where I can hunker down for half an hour and read.

As the journey goes on, the bus begins to fill up. A young woman sits in front of me and embarks on a telephone conversation that lasts until the city centre. From what I can gather, she is in a relatively new relationship and there appear to be teething troubles. She has bought food but the chap on the other end of the line seems to be wavering about turning up.

“I’ll be really hurt,” she says. “I’ll feel pain. Do you know what pain is?”

There is more conversation. He seems to rally and says he will come for the meal. Talk turns to some social occasion that he has recently attended, from what I can gather.

“Did you take your wife?” she asks.

I try to concentrate on my book but the phone call has more drama. Thankfully, I am distracted when a woman and man get on the bus and sit behind me. After a moment the woman behind starts coughing.

I can’t see her, but I feel that she is looking accusingly at her companion. She says: “Do you smell of soap?”

He denies it violently. “I don’t smell of soap!”

“Someone smells of soap,” she says pointedly. There is no-one behind them and no-one to the side of them. She coughs again. I can only assume that I smell of soap. She says: “I’ll have to move” and shifts to the other side of the bus.

I take a surreptitious sniff of my armpits to see if I smell of soap, but I can’t really tell.

I have lost track of the conversation still going on in front of me so I get back into my book. The bus stops and down the bus I see a young man get on and have a brief conversation with the driver. I think he’s asking how much a ticket is.

He looks at the coins in his hand and the driver shrugs. The man gets off. I shuffle around to feel in my pocket to see if I have any change but the bus has moved off, leaving the young man looking forlorn at the bus stop. I should have shouted to the driver to stop but I was too far back along the bus and didn’t, and I felt bad about it all the way to work.

What if he was on his way to a job interview but didn’t have enough for the journey? What if he misses out on the job? The conversation in front seems to have become an argument. The woman across the aisle is coughing again.

I get off the bus, annoyed that I haven’t read more of my book, feeling bad about the guy who couldn’t afford his bus fare, and wondering if I smell of soap.