Chapter 24: The Fourteenth Part 1
Jayce and Sky have a work-related chat. Jayce has a flashback to his childhood.
When he was a young boy, back when his paternal grandmother was alive, Jayce had on one memorable occasion accidentally liberated a chocolate biscuit from the tin (he’s still got it – the tin that is, not the biscuit – a lidded round container, bumped and bashed, with a Christmas scene showing a deer, a squirrel, three badgers, and a confused-looking cow wearing a party hat, standing around a highly decorated spruce tree. It now secretly lives in his magazine-worthy kitchen as an archaic piece of his childhood, a treasured item that Jayce wouldn’t get rid of if someone were to offer him a million cogs. If he keeps a packet of chocolate hobnobs in there, then that's between him and his tinny nostalgia) that lived on the high shelf in Grandma’s kitchen. It was a very high shelf, and far too elevated for a small child, but armed with a busy mind, three pull-out drawers that doubled as steps, and a fierce determination, Jayce had taken on the challenge, and won.
His grandmother, a tall woman with bright green eyes, and long, black-warring-with-grey hair, had had a sixth sense for infractions against sweet treats and confectionery, and had summoned Small Jayce to the scrubbed pine kitchen table. Two of the six chairs were slightly pulled out, and Grandma indicated he should take the red seat, whilst she sat on the yellow.
For a whole minute (probably. Jayce has never been good at waiting) nothing happened, but then she’d moved the giant tea cosy that had spent its life innocently insulating the cooling teapot, to reveal the tin.
Small Jayce’s eyes had widened at the sight, and he’d licked his lips to find that not even a phantom crumb of the delicious contraband still remained.
That was all. One word, and just his first name. If she had said his full name, then Jayce might have passed out there and then.
As it was, the prosecution's evidence consisted of the summons to the kitchen table, the biscuit tin, and his own singular name. Small Jayce never stood a chance.
He tried, really he did. Jayce tried to sit still, to be nonchalant (before even being old enough to know what the word meant), and to thoroughly show that he knew nothing of any biscuit-related crime. His body, however, didn’t get the memo, and failed to read the room. It – he – squirmed and wriggled, and the light of discovery danced in Grandma’s eyes.
“Mr Shifty strikes again!”
Small Jayce’s days of biscuit-rustling at Grandma’s house were sadly well and truly over.
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