There was a driver from Jemeppe, in the province of Liège, who for eleven years had run the route that goes past the dialysis centre, and she always ran it at that hour, the first run, the twenty-past-six.

At the depot they said of her that she always arrived twenty minutes before her shift, and that no one had ever noticed, because nobody notices the ones who come early.

Two people got on the twenty-past-six and got off three stops later, in front of the centre, three times a week, for four years.

For four years they had always been the same two, and they got on in the same order, and they sat in the same seat, and the one who got on first kept her centre card in her coat pocket even in summer, when the coat was not on her but over her arm.

On the day the strike began, which was a Thursday, Fabienne got to the depot at five fifty, as always, and on the board her run was written up and had not been crossed out.

No one had crossed anything out. That morning it simply did not leave.

That morning, at the depot, there were thirty-two people and the coffee machine.

The coffee machine at the Jemeppe depot takes coins and gives no change, and Fabienne brings her coins from home sorted by denomination in a pastille tin.

In the tin, that Thursday, there were enough for two coffees, and she took only one.

Malik came round with the list of the depots that had joined and read it out loud, one by one, and he read them all because they had all joined.

The thing they had joined over was a voucher worth one hundred euros a year.

The voucher is a sheet of paper with a number printed on it; it can be spent only in certain shops, it expires in December, and from what they say at the depot it is for buying light bulbs and washing powder, and some give it to their wife and some lose it.

One hundred euros a year is less than two euros a week; a five-year agreement guaranteed it to everyone on the network, and the agreement expired in December, and in December no one took anything away from anyone.

It simply was not made again.

Then in August the region's conciliation came to nothing, and so the depots set the two days, and the two days began that Thursday at six.

At six oh five Fabienne wrote a message to the woman who gets on first, and did not send it, because she had never had the woman's number.

The number she had was the centre's, which at that hour does not answer, and in fact at six oh six it rang unanswered eleven times.

Unanswered it rang the second time too, and so, at six oh eight, Fabienne went back to the key board and took the keys to the twenty-six.

The keys to the twenty-six hang on the third hook from the left, and that morning she had already taken them and put them back once, and this became known because the hook, when you let it go, strikes the iron, and at the depot that knock is recognised from behind.

From behind, from the changing-room corridor, came Malik, who is the depot representative and who joined the network the same year she did.

Malik did not tell her to stop. He held the yard door open for her, he let her through, and while she was opening the door of the twenty-six he said one sentence only.

«Tomorrow there will be three of them asking.»

Then he went back in and left the door open, which in the draught bangs, and it banged.

Fabienne stayed there with the door open and one foot on the first step. From the step, at that hour, you can see the Herstal road, which on Saturday mornings is empty as far as the bridge.

The out-of-service sign was already behind the windscreen, propped against the dashboard, with the lettering turned towards the road.

Fabienne got down. She closed the door with her flat hand, the way you close it when you do not want to make a noise, and the noise she made anyway.

Then she went back inside and put the keys back on the third hook.

On the third hook the keys stayed all that day and the next one too.

The next day was the second of the two, and the two days passed the way days pass when you do not drive.

At twenty past six on that first morning Fabienne was standing in the middle of the depot with her jacket still on, and at twenty-two minutes past six she asked a colleague whether he had his car, and the colleague did have it but he was at the other end of the city and would get there at seven.

At seven it was no use any more.

When the service started again, on the Monday, there was one person only at the centre stop. It was the woman from the front seat, the one who gets on second and who carries the blue canvas bag.

The other one, the one who got on first, was not there that Monday, and she was not there the Monday after either. At the depot nothing was learned, and Fabienne asked nothing, because at the centre they do not give the names and she had never asked for the name.

She opened the doors. She waited the time she always waited, which is twenty seconds counted on the dashboard. She closed them.

She said good morning, continuing to Herstal.

The Monday after, same hour, same stop, and the woman with the blue bag got on and sat at the front.

She said good morning, continuing to Herstal.

On the third Monday there was no one at the stop, and Fabienne opened the doors all the same, and she waited the twenty seconds counted on the dashboard, and she waited all of them.

She said good morning, continuing to Herstal.