The driver did not ask many questions.
That was what Jay liked about him from the first five minutes he took the bag, put it in the boot, confirmed the address, and drove. No conversation about the weather or how the flight was or whether Jay was visiting or returning. Just the road and the radio turned low and the particular quiet of someone who understood that silence was also a service.
Jay watched London come back to him through the window.
It arrived in pieces — the signage, the grey of the sky that was somehow different from the grey he had been looking at for three months, the density of it all, the way the city stacked itself on top of itself without apology. He had forgotten how much of it there was. How it just kept going, block after block, with no interest in whether you had been away or for how long or what had happened to you in the interim.
He had missed it.
He hadn't known how much until right now, watching it move past the glass.
