I am the one who waits in the car and remembers the appointment

The role I want does not really have a name. I am the person who waits in the car, carries the bags, holds the coat, remembers the appointment nobody wrote down, and is quietly and completely reliable while somebody else does the important thing.

Thirty eight, east London, I drive for a living, I am good in traffic and better under pressure. Divorced, no children, and a flat I keep unnaturally tidy.

I have done this properly once, for two years, for a woman whose work involved a lot of travel and a lot of nonsense at short notice. My part was logistics and presence. I never once did anything anybody would call kinky and I have never been happier than I was in that stretch.

Nothing about it was paid and nothing about it should be. She bought lunch sometimes and I bought it other times, the way friends do, and the moment anyone starts totting that up it stops being the thing it is.

What I want back is being depended on by one person who tells me plainly what she needs and is not embarrassed about needing it. I am entirely fine with being invisible. I am not fine with never being told whether I got it right. Not looking for anything that requires me to talk much. Not looking to be anybody's driver in the professional sense, which is a different job and one I have also had.