By Jill Hopper
This is a powerful and beautifully written account of the author’s growing relationship with a young man who only had a few months to live. When they first met he had already had Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and was in remission but it soon returned so their love blossomed under the cloud of Arif’s impending death. He had found the mahogany pod of the title on a holiday in Africa before he met Jill but it became a symbol of their love still some 25 years later.