April 3

The Rosebury Park pond has ghosts.

I am feeding bread to the male mallard ducks, the two Canadian geese, the countless, chuckling pigeons around my feet. I am throwing bread out and onto the soupy-green surface of the pond; a pond devoid of any plant life and probably any life at all.

But I am wrong.

Bubbles and swirls on the surface suggest a fish is coming for the bread. I have heard rumours that there are fish in the pond. Imaginary monsters made up to stop children wading in.

Yes, there, suddenly, a gaping ‘o’ and two black-beady eyes. The head of a carp gulping for bread, nudging it and then sinking under in a flick of its surprisingly large body. A monster of a fish; a real fish. I am watching the bread and there are more bubbles, swirls and sudden ‘o’s. Three, four, five carp are taking the bait. Their size is a shock; their pale-cream bodies like ghosts gliding around under the surface.<

They are turning in clouds of dark mud. They are rising and revealing their fat faces; now they flick down. My eyes are fishing for them. I watch for five minutes until the soupy-green surface is still and the ducks and geese drift off, full up and bored.

The pigeons keep pecking; nothing bores them.