The Bicycle Bell in the Break Room

The bicycle bell sits on the break room table, next to a pile of old timetables. Hedy notices it at six in the morning, when she sits down with her study book.

She is nineteen, and she is a trainee at the bus depot. Tomorrow she takes her theory test, and she has not slept well for three nights. The break room is the only quiet place she knows. It has a coffee machine and a sofa with a broken spring. Its window looks onto the washing bay.

The bell is small and silver. A thin scratch runs around it like a spiral. Hedy picks it up and presses the lever with her thumb.

Ring.

Every head in the room turns. A driver with a newspaper frowns at her.

"Sorry," Hedy says. "I found it here. Does anyone know whose it is?"

"Not mine," the driver says. "I don't even own a bicycle."

She waits, but nobody else speaks. A rule on the notice board says that found things go to the cleaner on the morning shift. Hedy decides to follow it. She puts the bell in her pocket and goes to look for her.

The cleaner is in the corridor, pushing a cart full of bottles and cloths. She stops and takes the bell between two fingers.

"Pretty," she says. "But it belongs to a driver, I think. Those people always lose small things. Ask the early shift."

"The early shift left an hour ago," says Hedy.

"Then ask the night shift. They are just coming in." The cleaner puts the bell back into Hedy's hand and returns to her cart. "I cannot keep it. My cart already has too many bits and pieces."

Hedy looks at the bell. It is not her problem. She has a test tomorrow, and she has read only half of the chapter on road signs. Still, she cannot put the bell back on the table. It feels wrong, like leaving a lost glove on a wall.

At seven o'clock the night drivers come through the door, tired and slow. Hedy steps in front of the first one, a tall man with a large bag.

"Excuse me. Is this yours?"

He holds it up to the light. "I wish it were. I like a good bell." He thinks for a moment. "Try the dispatch office. Someone there knows everything."

The dispatch office is small and warm, and it smells of paper. The dispatcher has a headset on one ear and a pen behind the other. He listens to Hedy with one eye on his screen.

"Bicycle bell," he says. "I have never seen it before. Why do you ask me? I do not own a bicycle either."

"Everyone says to ask someone else," Hedy says.

"That is how a depot works." He smiles, then looks at the clock. "Go and talk to Elif. If anybody knows, she does. She has been here since before the roof was fixed."

Hedy hesitates. Elif is the driver who is training her. She is a quiet woman of fifty with short grey hair. She says very little, and when she speaks, it is usually to correct something. Hedy would prefer not to show her a problem that is not about buses.

But Elif is in the break room now, pouring coffee into a thick white mug. Hedy walks over and holds out the bell.

"I am sorry to bother you. I found this, and I cannot find the owner."

Elif looks at the bell for a long moment. She does not take it. Instead she says, "Where did you find it?"

"On the table. By the timetables."

"What time?"

"About six. It was there when I came in."

"Who sat there before you?"

Hedy opens her mouth, and then she closes it again. She has not asked anyone this question. She has asked only "Is it yours?" and every answer has been no.

"I do not know," she admits.

"Then you have been asking the wrong people," Elif says gently. "Driving is mostly noticing. You look at the mirror, the road, the face of the person at the stop. A bell is the same. Look at it again."

Hedy turns the bell in her hand. It has a small green sticker on the back, so faded that she nearly misses it. The sticker shows a frog with one eye closed.

"I have seen this frog," she says slowly.

"Where?"

She thinks about the washing bay window, and the road beyond it. Every morning, around half past six, a girl on a bicycle crosses the depot yard. She delivers parcels to the office. She rides a white bike with a basket, and on the basket there is a green frog.

"The courier," Hedy says. "She comes every day with the post. She sits in here sometimes, to warm her hands."

"Does she have a bell?"

Hedy tries to remember. She sees the girl's bike in her mind, bright against the grey yard. The handlebars are bare, with a tiny hole where something used to be.

"No," she says. "She does not have one now."

Elif lifts her mug and drinks, as if the matter is closed. Hedy looks at the clock. It is nearly eight, and the courier has already come and gone. She will not return until tomorrow morning. By then Hedy will be sitting in a test room with her hands wet from worry.

She could leave the bell with the dispatcher. That would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

"I think I will wait by the gate," she says. "Maybe the courier comes back for something."

"Maybe," Elif says. Her face stays calm, but one corner of her mouth moves.

Hedy takes her study book and sits on the low wall by the depot gate. She reads about road signs and keeps one eye on the road. The page about priority at crossings is difficult. Outside, with the sound of engines and the smell of oil, she holds it in her head better. She reads the page twice. Then she reads it a third time with her eyes closed.

At a quarter past nine she hears a bicycle. It comes fast around the corner, and the rider is standing on the pedals. It is the girl, and she looks upset. She stops by the gate and checks the ground, the wall and the gutter with a worried frown.

"Are you looking for this?" Hedy asks.

She holds up the bell. The girl's face changes in a single second. She jumps off her bike and takes the bell with both hands.

"Where was it?" she says. "I have looked everywhere. I came back twice."

"In the break room. You must have left it on the table this morning."

The girl presses the lever. Ring. The bell sounds clear and bright across the yard, and a pigeon flies off the roof. She laughs and covers her mouth.

"Thank you," she says. "You do not understand. It is the only thing I have from my brother."

She turns the bell over. Something small rattles inside it, a tiny sound like a seed in a shell. She looks up at Hedy as if she wants to say more.

Then she closes her fingers around it and says nothing. Behind Hedy, the depot gate hums as it opens. A bus is coming in, and Elif is at the wheel.