The Allotment

Margaret was a retired teacher who had lived in Leeds all her life. When her husband died, her daughter suggested that she should find a hobby, so Margaret put her name on the waiting list for an allotment. An allotment is a small piece of land that you rent from the city to grow vegetables. Two years later, she finally got one.

The plot that they gave her was full of weeds and old plastic, and it was too big for one person. The council's letter said that she would share it with another gardener. Margaret imagined an old man with a pipe. Instead, the person who arrived the next Saturday was a young Colombian student called Andres, who was studying engineering at the university.

At first they hardly spoke. Andres came in the evenings, when Margaret had already gone home, and left notes on the shed door: "I watered the tomatoes. The slugs are eating the lettuce." Margaret replied with notes of her own: "Thank you. Put crushed eggshells around the lettuce. Slugs hate them."

In May, Andres started coming on Saturday mornings too. He asked her what the plants with the yellow flowers were, and she explained that they were courgettes, which Americans call zucchini. He told her that in Colombia his grandmother grew beans that climbed up the corn, and that he had not eaten a proper tomato since he had arrived in England. "Wait until August," Margaret said.

The allotment attracted visitors. There was a robin that followed Margaret everywhere, waiting for worms. There was a fox that stole Andres's gloves. And there were people: the Polish family whose plot was next to theirs, a teenager who wanted to know if potatoes grew on trees, and Margaret's grandson, who came one Sunday and stayed for the whole afternoon.

Andres had been lonely in Leeds, although he had never said so. Now he had a place where he belonged, and someone who asked him how his exams had gone. Margaret had been lonely too, in a different way. Now she had someone who needed her advice, and who laughed at her jokes.

In August they picked the first tomatoes, which were warm from the sun. Andres ate one standing between the plants and closed his eyes. "This is the tomato that I was waiting for," he said. Margaret laughed. "The ones that you grow yourself always taste better," she said. "That is the only thing that I know for certain."

In September, Andres went back to Colombia for a month to see his family. The note that he left on the shed door said: "Look after the beans. See you in October. Thank you for everything." Margaret read it twice, put it in her pocket, and went to water the beans.