Shelf Six

The lost-property office at Leeds bus station is a room with one window and eleven shelves, and Imani volunteers there on Thursdays.

Most of what arrives has a name in it. The canvas bag that came in on the second Thursday in March did not. Inside there was a half-finished scarf, four balls of grey wool, and a folded paper bag from a bakery on Vicar Lane. No phone, no keys, no letters.

The rule was that anything nobody claimed went to the charity shop after thirty days. Imani wrote the date on a label, put the bag on shelf six, and then took it down again and searched it a second time.

That was when she noticed the phone number on the paper bag, written in pencil in the corner and half rubbed away. Four of the digits were readable. She knew that ringing strangers was a risk. The manager had told the volunteers in January that they were not detectives. So she rang the bakery instead and asked whether they kept a note of their orders. They did.

The man who came in the following Thursday was about seventy, in a good coat. He stood in the doorway for a moment before he said that his name was Otis.

He said he'd been on the bus to Headingley on the ninth of March. Then he corrected himself. He said he had left the bag on the bus on the ninth of March, and that he had meant to.

The scarf had been his wife's, he told Imani. She had started it in November and had not finished it. For a week he had hoped that nobody would hand it in.

“And now?” Imani asked.

Otis looked at the shelf for a while. He said he'd take the wool as well.