Right Now, Rosalind Pryce Is Making a Woman Miss Her Bus

4.52 pm. Drizzle, the fine kind that doesn't fall so much as hang. The shelter has a crack across the roof panel and one drip, steady, landing on the left shoulder of a grey wool coat.

The coat is borrowed. It belongs to Rosalind Pryce's neighbour, who is eighty-one and asked for it back by Sunday. The sleeves stop two fingers short of the wrist. The woman wearing it keeps pulling them down.

A bus comes round the corner at 4.54. Its indicator is already on. Rosalind lifts one hand off the camera, palm out, like someone telling a dog to stay. The driver looks at her, looks at the woman, and drives on. He has done this before.

Rosalind Pryce shoots fashion and has only ever shot it in bus shelters. She says a shelter is the one room in a city where nobody has to pretend they're not waiting. Her camera is a small compact with a flash that fires too hard. She stands about two metres away, never more.

The woman is not allowed to look at the road. She looks at the timetable, which has been scratched off by someone with a key. She looks at her own shoes. She looks at nothing for a long time. Rosalind says "there" very quietly, and the flash goes.

On the glass behind her, a sticker has peeled to the shape of a country that doesn't exist. Rosalind photographs that too, once, without telling anyone why.

A second bus at 5.06. Same hand, same driver, a slower nod. The woman's breath has fogged the inside of the shelter. Rosalind waits for it to clear and then waits a little longer.

She keeps a notebook of shelters, with a mark out of ten for roof, bench and what she calls the lean. This one has a four for the roof. She says the crack is the only reason she came.

At 5.20 the light goes the colour of weak tea. Rosalind lowers the camera and says it's right now. The woman asks which bus she should get. Rosalind thinks about it and says she has no idea. She has never been on one.