For twenty-three years, Yusuf Hasan drove strangers through the city and listened as they revealed the truths they could not tell anyone else. Then the cab was gone, the journeys stopped, and Yusuf discovered that listening had been the easy part.

In The Fare, Yusuf presented his final day behind the wheel as a graceful decision to leave at the right time. But there was something he did not tell his listeners.

He had been diagnosed with an irregular heart rhythm. Faced with medical examinations, licensing forms and the possibility that someone else might decide his driving days were over, Yusuf walked away before they could stop him. He called it retirement. In truth, it was fear.

Now, at fifty-four, Yusuf wakes each morning with nowhere he is required to be. For decades, the radio on his dashboard supplied a steady stream of people who needed him. Without it, the hours stretch ahead without shape or purpose. He soon realises that he is not simply mourning his work. He is mourning the feeling of being necessary.

For years, Yusuf believed he understood people. From the safety of the front seat, he could recognise grief, shame, loneliness and regret in the smallest hesitation. But when he becomes the passenger, everything changes. Without the windscreen, the route and the certainty of being the man in control, he discovers how much of his wisdom belonged not to him, but to the position he occupied.

His new journeys take him far beyond the streets he once knew. A visit to the grave of a man he never met forces Yusuf to question whether he ever truly knew the passengers whose stories shaped his life. A former dispatcher reveals how little he understood the people who worked beside him. A hospital appointment makes him confront the indignity of being cared for. An eight-hour flight leaves him with nowhere to escape from the truths his wife has waited years to say.