Sketched tiger head with ornamental swirls

You did not tell Mrs Oddie. You sat on an upturned crate and drew it in the margin beside March, hatching the cheeks with short strokes so the fur would read as weather, letting the mane curl off the edge of the page as though the paper were a wind. Each time you lifted the pencil a flick of ink fell from the nib and bloomed on the paper, and you let it, because the dots seemed to belong to the animal, a spray of something it had shaken off on the way in. By the time the bell rang for supper the tiger had a face and a wild, unfinished ruff, and you had forgotten the seed counts entirely.

Overnight the rain came sideways through the open vent. In the morning the ledger lay swollen in the wet, the drawing run and softened into the paper, and a trail of curled ink ran across the lawn towards the glasshouse, leaving small black seeds along the path. Where the tiger had been, the sorrel had gone dark and feathery.

The gardeners swept the mess up as blight and burned the wet leaves. You kept the page, pressed flat between two boards in the potting shed. Last spring, when the rhubarb bolted and the lawn went to clover, a stripe of yellow iris opened beside the compost heap, and you still check the edge of the beds at dusk with the pencil in your hand, counting what has come back.