The Woman Who Answered the Wrong Number

The Blue Star taxi rank on Harbour Road had a phone number ending in 8-4-1. Miriam's flat, three streets away, had a number ending in 8-4-2. For twelve years this was the single most important fact of her evenings.

The first year she explained. Wrong number, sorry, try one digit up. The second year she stopped explaining and started helping, because people who ring a taxi rank at eleven at night are rarely in a position to appreciate a correction. She kept a pen by the phone. She learned which drivers worked which nights, which streets flooded in heavy rain, and that the rank answered faster on the second line after ten.

Blue Star found out in the eighth year, when a driver mentioned that a passenger had thanked him for the lady who takes the bookings. The owner drove over with a tin of biscuits and an offer of a job. Miriam declined the job and kept the biscuits. They came to a different arrangement instead: the rank would ring her at the start of every shift to say who was out, and she would carry on doing exactly what she had been doing anyway.

When she moved away, the phone company gave the number to a dental practice. For about six months the receptionist there took requests for a car to the station and passed them along, having been told on her first morning that this was simply part of the job. Nobody thought to explain why. She assumed every dental practice did it.