Gooseberries.

The neighbour shouted when I climbed over the wall to steal fruit; couldn’t resist those balls of jade, reminding me of tart green apples.

‘There’s not enough to share,’ she said.

When mother died, the neighbour delivered a bag of ripe gooseberries.

‘Too much for me,’ she said.

Now, her garden overgrown, she can’t reach the gooseberry bushes.

‘Can you climb over and pick them? Take them all, I never liked gooseberries,’ she said.

Originally published in Paragraph Planet
https://www.paragraphplanet.com/