I was in the garden. It was spacious. There were all sorts of vegetables, just dug up and lying around. Carrots and peas and such. Sitting out, half eaten or half rotting. Sometimes both.

I regret what I said to that man at the cathedral today, about his peaches. My words weren’t justified. I wish I was invisible.

There was a girl sitting on the lawn just outside. Of the garden, I mean. Not the cathedral, of course. She was wearing a summer dress in spite of the definitively autumn temperatures. At first I thought she hadn’t seen me, but then she turned her head and spoke. “I think it was the billy boys,” she said, her words high pitched and innocent like a flower that had just begun to wither. “Them’s the ones that turned up your earth and spoiled your plants.”

“It’s not my garden,” I tried to explain, the words erupting from my lips perhaps a little too hastily. “I just tend it for a friend.” But she was no longer listening. Her eyes were distracted by the grey and listless sky.