title: Bus Stop: A Memoir
author: Ruby Fay Burford
description: Ruby Fay Burford was one of six children born in East Texas to struggling working-class parents: a farmer and a domestic worker. She and her late husband, Frank, were married for over fifty years, and they had two sons, Frank Jr. and Ray. She currently lives in Dallas, Texas.
zlib_text: **Chapter One**
  
  Annie Delamere could tell something was wrong.
  
  They’d spotted the sign as they were walking from the car to the footpath. It
  was attached to what had once been a bus stop, though Annie had no idea if any
  buses now passed up this way. The sign itself was pitted with rust, and read
  simply: ‘Buses no longer stop at Hell Bank’.
  
  Gary, as usual, had treated it as a joke and embarked on one of his familiar
  routines, wondering if the service had been discontinued because too many
  demons had crowded the back seats, or because customers couldn’t buy return
  tickets. He’d ended, inevitably, by questioning whether Hell Bank offered a
  savings account. Annie had had sufficient experience of Gary’s sense of humour
  during her years of working with Zoe to tune it all out until he’d exhausted
  his ideas, which generally didn’t take long.
  
  Zoe normally seemed to do the same. Today, though, she turned away while Gary
  was still speaking and strode away up the footpath towards the moorland,