That Friday evening in August I was already sitting at our mossy table in the garden when I saw Isabel crossing the lawn, feet bare, with wine and two glasses. She sat down beside me. It was nine o’clock. The last rays of the sun had left the tops of the cypresses almost an hour before, but a gentle twilight would remain all night. Venus had just appeared in the west above Waun Fach.
She inhaled and exhaled softly. “I could almost drink that scent,” she said.
“Is it the honeysuckle?”
“The late roses, I think. They are sublime.”
The wine had come straight from the fridge. I traced a line through the condensation with my finger. She picked up the bottle and filled the two glasses.
“I don’t think it’s the roses,” I said.
“Why not?” she said, with a slight edge.
“Diurnal pollinators. Bees, mostly,” I said. “Honeysuckle is a moth species. Ergo, more likely honeysuckle.”
“But it doesn’t smell like honeysuckle,” she said, tasting the wine.
I took a few sips. A wood pigeon was cooing from somewhere close to the oak in the corner.
“Kohli made a century,” I said.
“Who’s that?”
“One of the India batters.”
“I don’t know why we bothered inventing all these sports. We’re so hopeless at them. Ooh! Look, darling, the fireflies are out. One, two, three, four … oh, there’s so many of them.”
They were in the rough grass beneath the apple-tree, little green eyes. More appeared as we watched.
“The Japanese say they’re the souls of the dead, lighting up,” Isabel said.
“Seems unlikely.”
“You don’t believe in anything.”
“I believe they’re beetles with bioluminescent abdomens. A bit more interesting than souls of the dead.”
“Maybe to you.”
“Given that souls don’t actually exist.”
She poured more wine, a small top-up for her but a full glass for me.
“Well, who knows what they are?” she said. “Souls of the dead … lost spirits … signs left by the little people. Oh sorry, you don’t believe in them, either.”
I walked over the lawn to the apple-tree, glass still in hand. When I got back, I dropped a little beetle with her glowing abdomen on the table.
“One Lampyris noctiluca, bioluminescent,” I said.
“I don’t know why you have to be so bloody rational all the time,” she said – her accent, usually barely noticeable, now clear enough to place her somewhere west of Somerset.
“It just makes more sense to me,” I said.
I had to go out the next morning. When I got home Isabel was having lunch at the kitchen table, wearing her gardening clothes. I found bread, cheese, and tomatoes, and joined her.
“Had to spray the apple-tree,” she said. “Absolutely full of aphids. Like a bloody convention of the little bastards.”
“Being a bit unfair, aren’t you? Fireflies are lost spirits, but aphids are little bastards?”
“When there’s no apples, you’re the first to complain,” she said.
“What did you use?”
“That Bayer stuff you bought. The organic one was hopeless. So I zapped them, to use the technical term. Can’t touch the apples for a while, but they’re not ready anyway.”
After lunch she went for a nap. I slipped out to the garden. I knelt beneath the apple-tree and began to search in the grass, parting the leaves and sliding my fingers down to the soil. After three minutes, I felt something hard and dry between my fingers. I dropped it in my left palm. It might not have been a dead soul, but it was certainly a zapped firefly. It was not the last one I found. I threw a handful towards the hedge.
That evening, Isabel was outside before me. I took out the same bottle of wine and a piece of cheddar. There was dew on the grass and, as I walked towards her, I wished I’d put a sweater on.
On the table were some roses in a vase.
“Smell,” she said.
I leaned over and breathed in. It was the same smell as the night before.
“Can’t smell a thing,” I said, of course.
“It was the roses, believe me,” she said.
I broke off a piece of cheese and took a sip of the wine. The wood pigeon had been cooing but broke off when an owl hooted.
“Oh look! They’re out again,” she said, pointing towards the gate by the horse-paddock. In the sedge, the little green lights were switching on. “And there too – under the tree again.” As we watched, more eyes started to gleam in the exact spot that I’d combed through in the afternoon.
“Stubborn little souls,” I said. “Or maybe busy pixies.”
“Your problem is that you think you know everything and you always want to be right.”
© Tropical Writers Inc 2026