I hadn’t managed to insert my front door key in the lock when Doris appeared in her garden. She rushed over to the side fence, beaming, and said, ‘See you around the back.’ Then she dashed off before I could answer, and I was left to enter my house, put down my things, and see what she wanted.
The previous owners of both houses had seen fit to insert a gate in the back garden fence. Doris had left it there. I moved in some years later and after we had got to know each other, she suggested I fix the hinges and the rusty barrel bolt which were on my side. Why enter through the front where all the sticky beaks can see you when you can nip through the side gate, and no one need ever know. Who that might be, I couldn’t fathom. Our houses overlooked Myrtle Bay Park, mine more than Doris’s as th
