The Map Drawn on a Grocery Receipt
Chapter 2 - The person at the gate
The red gate belonged to an allotment. Waiting there was a woman holding a tin of biscuits. She introduced herself as May and thanked Tess for bringing Arthur.
Arthur had rented a plot beside May's for twenty years. After moving into supported accommodation, he stopped visiting. May had drawn the map to invite him to see the apple tree they planted together.
He had forgotten the route, not the tree. At the bridge he remembered carrying it as a sapling, roots wrapped in his old coat.
Tess stayed for tea. The pair argued affectionately about pruning and weather. There was no buried money or secret estate, only a tree bent under ordinary apples. Yet Arthur looked as if he had recovered something much larger.
