Last Tram

The last tram on line 4 left the depot at 23.50 and reached the end of the line at 00.40, and for most of that journey Sigrid drove it empty. Most nights there was only one passenger: a tall man in a chef's jacket under his coat, who got on at the stop by the river and rode all the way to the terminus, where the tracks curved round and the lights of the depot glowed.

He always sat at the front. He always said good night when he got off. For four months, that was all.

Then, one rainy night in February, he got on with a paper bag.

'Leftovers,' he said, holding it up. 'Tarte tatin. I made too much. Do you eat on your break?'

She had a fifteen-minute break at the end of the line before driving the empty tram back. That night she spent it sitting on the step of the tram with the chef, whose name was Emil, eating warm apple tart with plastic forks while the rain fell on the tracks.

It became their ritual. Every night he brought something: soup in a flask, a slice of cake, bread still warm. Every night the break felt shorter.

One night in spring, when her shift was over and the tram was parked in the depot, he was waiting at the gate.

'I never asked where you live,' he said.

'Come and see,' she said.

They walked through the sleeping city to her flat, and he cooked her breakfast at two in the morning, and they did not sleep until the first trams of the day began to rattle past the window.