The Allotments
The allotments run along the road in tidy strips: beans, dahlias, rhubarb under upturned buckets. Mrs. Pell is here, of course — she is possibly several people — turning compost with the vigor of a woman settling an argument.
Her plot has seven beds. Six are immaculate. The seventh is bare, raked, and empty.
"Resting it," she says, following your gaze. "One bed in seven, always. Everything needs a day it doesn't have to be anything." She stops, hearing herself, and turns the compost with renewed violence. "It's just good gardening," she says, "and that's all it is."
As you leave, you see the same pattern down the whole row: every plot, one bed lying fallow. All of them the fourth from the gate.