The Gateau des Rois

Chapter 2

 Christmas songs blared loudly from May's old radio as she sat with Charlene and Oliver in the living room, telling each other bad Christmas jokes and wearing brightly coloured paper hats they find in their crackers. The fireplace was their tiny sun for the evening, casting long shadows over the rug. Flames curled and swayed, crackling as they burnt the dry wood. Oliver watched in hypnotised joy, holding his hands out to get just a little more of the gentle heat.

Thud! Suddenly, frantic footsteps from upstairs interrupted his peaceful train of thought. He left May and Charlene and went up to find his mother looking highly distressed, fumbling through random drawers and cabinets.

"What's wrong, mum?" Oliver asked.

"Have you seen a ring? It's the one your father gave to me and I always have with me, my wedding ring. I can't have lost it. " His mother seemed excessively anxious and deep frown lines bore into her face.

"Where did you last see it?"

"Before I went to cook our dinner, I left it on this table because I didn't want to get it dirty." She waved her hand to a small table and Oliver went to look.

A chill froze Oliver over as he felt the cake that he had made squirm in his stomach. On the table was not the ring his mother had been looking for, but a coin. A small coin. The coin that should have been in the cake. Oliver glanced at his mother who moved to another room looking for her precious ring and, with shaky hands, reached out to take the coin.

It was then that the cold feeling of dread had fully dawned on him. He had put the ring, not the coin, in his cake. How could he tell his mother what has happened? How can he face her rage, her sorrow, her loss? Having an idea, he burst into May's bedroom where he found her plastic jewellery box, decorated with pink butterfly stickers, hidden amongst her badly folded bed sheets. Opening it, he knew that none of May's plastic rings would ever be even anywhere close as being a replacement for the ring. He remembered his mother's ring: it was small and thin with a beautiful emerald stone embedded into the gold, the initials of his late father carved on the underside of it.

Obvious to him that he was not going to be able to find a replacement, Oliver resigned himself to beginning to clean up the kitchen; perhaps he hoped the monotony of the task would help his mind shift to other things.

The kitchen felt very cold. Wintry breezes sneaked in through a small gap in the window and Oliver could hear Charlene and May's laughter amid the cacophony of Christmas songs the radio in the living room played. He let the freezing cold water run through his fingers as he washed the dishes, feeling his fingers go numb, as his eyes drifted to the knife that he used to cut the cake. Rinsing the crumbs off the knife, he dried it and put it not where all the other cutlery went, but in his pocket.

Just then, Charlene entered the room holding two boxes, both decorated in shiny, red ribbons. She noticed Oliver and hugged them to her chest protectively.

"Don't open them yet," she told Oliver, "there's a present for you and your mum."

Oliver blankly watched her place them under the Christmas tree, then suddenly she smiled, as if on impulse, and pointed to the window.

"Come outside with me. I think it's going to snow. "