When I was a boy, I had a favourite treat and it was when my mum made chocolate cake. She said, “Listen Michael, if there’s any chocolate cake left over at tea-time, you can take it to school tomorrow, to have in the playground.”
One time, there WAS some chocolate cake left over at teatime and I went to bed. In the middle of the night, I woke up, and I thought… chocolate cake! Maybe I could go downstairs and have a little look at it. Everyone’s asleep, my mum and dad in bed. Out along the passage, careful not to tread on the creaky floorboard outside my mum and dad’s room.
Are they still asleep? Yes! On downstairs into the kitchen, over to the cupboard and – yeah! – there it is. Now, just look at it. I see some little crumbs on the plates, so I think if I lick my finger maybe I could pick up some of those crumbs.
Then I notice some little crumbly bits on the side of the cake, so I think, maybe if I take a knife I could just tidy it up a little bit. So, now I’ve got the taste of chocolate cake in my mouth. I think, maybe I could take a slice. So this time, through the crispy icing on the top, through the squashy icing in the middle. And now I think, I can’t stop myself! What a greedy pig!
Oh no! It’s gone.
Oh, no, they’re bound to notice now. What am I going to do? I know! I’ll wash up the plate and the knife and they won’t know anything about it.
Plate, knife, under the sink. And back up to bed. Along the passage. Still asleep!
Into the bedroom, under the covers, nice warm feeling, chocolate cake in my belly. Goody, goody goody!
In the morning I get up, and I’m having my breakfast, and my mum, busying about all over the place, and…
“Something else nice! There’s some chocolate cake left over from yesterday for you to take to school today!” And I went…
“No, it’s OK, it’s all right.”
And she’s looking at me, very closely, just here. And she says, “What’s that?”
And I said, “What’s what?”
She said, “That there, that there. It’s not…chocolate cake, is it?”
And I went… “Dunno…”
“You haven’t eaten the whole of the rest of the chocolate cake, have you?”
And I said, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t KNOW if you’ve eaten all that chocolate cake? Listen here. That’s the last time you EVER have chocolate cake totake to school. D’you hear me? Go upstairs to the bathroom and wash your dirty, sticky face.”
I went upstairs and I looked in the mirror and I saw it, just there. The chocolate blob. And I looked at it and I thought, that’s what gave the game away. She wouldn’t have known otherwise.
