Or would this make you happy?

3.

A stranger approaches, asks our Lady-in-Waiting the way to a small hidden garden that opens only one day of the year - this day, this year - a garden few know about, fewer care about, and even less visit.

I will show you, our woman says, taken by the frank smile of the stranger, and her rather fabulous black wool coat which bears a strong resemblance to that worn by Lana Turner in a movie she saw long ago.

She has style, this stranger.

In the small walled garden they talk to each other, discover a passion for Roma tomatoes, Russian sunflowers and second hand-clothes. They each relate stories that could be spun upon the back of another's second skin.

They call the wearing of anothers clothes a resurrection, of sorts.

Homage.

Something beaded and heavy, or cut on the bias, a crisp printed cotton cinched at the waist, bearing the label "House of Carroli", a green 1930's bakelite handbag in the shape of a large green apple.

They will probably become friends.

Who knows what might happen then?

Not me, not you.

A link has been made, a connection.

Let's leave it at that, shall we?

(One thing is for sure. Nothing will ever be the same.)

 

And that, dear scrollers, is surely the definition of a story.