The fox in the glasshouse

An original first-person fictional account set in an invented community garden.

The door had barely clicked shut behind me when the staging erupted. Pots toppled, leaves shook and something red shot across the narrow aisle. I backed into a shelf so sharply that a packet of seeds slid down my neck. Only when the animal reached the far wall and spun round did I recognise the fox.

For several seconds, neither of us moved. I held an empty seed tray in front of me like a shield. The fox was smaller than it had seemed while it was racing between the benches, but its stare fixed me to the spot. I could hear my own breathing, quick and shallow, and was absurdly offended that the animal appeared calmer than I was.

Then I saw the damage. Three tomato plants lay sideways in the soil, and a row of young lettuces had been flattened into green smears. I had raised them from seeds no bigger than crumbs. “Look what you've done,” I said. My voice sounded stern enough for a classroom and ridiculous in a glasshouse. The fox lowered its head, but it was watching the door, not listening to me.

Its sides were rising and falling rapidly. One paw hovered above the floor before touching down again. It glanced from the corner to the aisle, from the aisle to the door and from the door to me. The pattern was so clear that my anger had nowhere comfortable to remain. The spring had pulled the door shut, and I was standing between the fox and the only way out.

I lowered the tray. Moving sideways, I kept close to the bench until I reached the latch. Every scrape of my shoe made the fox tense. I opened the door, wedged it with the watering can and stepped outside. Through the misted glass, I watched the fox approach the aisle, retreat and approach again. Waiting became harder than opening the door. Part of me still wanted it to hurry before it crushed anything else.

At last, the fox came through. For an instant it was close enough for me to see soil on its whiskers. Then it crossed the path, slipped beneath the hedge and was gone. It did not pause or look back. Its lack of ceremony was almost a relief; I had not rescued a grateful storybook creature. I had simply stopped frightening an animal that wanted to leave.

Inside, I lifted the tomatoes and pressed soil around their roots. Two might recover. The lettuces would not. I minded the loss, but the anger had drained out of it. I kept the door propped open while I worked, and cold morning air moved freely among the leaves.

How does the writer present the narrator's response to finding a fox trapped in the glasshouse? Support your answer with references to the passage.