It Wasn't Me

It was Granny Rose's eightieth birthday, and the O'Brien family had been planning the party for weeks. Aunt Maeve had ordered the cake from the best bakery in Dublin: three layers of chocolate sponge, a thick coat of cream and, on top, a sugar rose in Granny's favorite shade of pink. It arrived at the house on Saturday morning and was placed, with great ceremony, on the top shelf of the fridge. The party was due to start at six.

At half past four, Maeve opened the fridge to check on it. What she saw made her scream so loudly that the dog hid under the sofa. Somebody had cut a huge slice out of the cake. Not a polite little slice, either, but nearly a quarter of it, and the sugar rose had disappeared completely.

Within two minutes, the whole family was standing in the kitchen. "Right," said Maeve, pointing at the gap in the cake. "Who did this?"

"It wasn't me," said her husband, Declan, at once. "I've been in the garden all afternoon putting up the lights. Ask anyone." Nobody could confirm this, because nobody else had been in the garden.

"Don't look at me," said sixteen-year-old Niamh. "I don't even like chocolate. If anyone ate it, it was Conor. He eats everything."

Her younger brother Conor went red. "It wasn't me! The only thing I've eaten today is a bowl of cereal. What I did do was open the fridge to get some milk, but I didn't touch the cake. I swear." He paused. "Actually, the person who was looking at that cake all morning was Uncle Frank."

Uncle Frank, who had driven up from Cork the night before, looked deeply offended. "It's true that I admired it," he said. "Anyone would. But it was Declan who told me there was plenty of food in the fridge and that I should help myself."

"I meant the ham sandwiches!" said Declan. "Not the cake!"

The argument went round in circles for twenty minutes. Niamh accused Conor, Conor accused Frank, Frank accused Declan, and Declan accused the dog, which was rather unfair, as the dog could not possibly have opened the fridge. Maeve began phoning bakeries to see if any of them could make a new cake in an hour and a half. None of them could.

It was at this point that Granny Rose came into the kitchen. She had been having a nap upstairs, and she was wearing her best blue dress, ready for her party. She looked at the cake, then at her family, all red-faced and shouting, and she began to laugh.

"What on earth is the matter with you all?" she asked. Maeve showed her the cake. "Someone has ruined your birthday cake, Mam. And nobody will admit it."

Granny Rose sat down at the kitchen table and folded her hands. "Well, then," she said calmly. "I suppose I'd better admit it myself. It was me who ate it."

There was total silence. "You?" said Maeve.

"I came down at lunchtime and everyone was busy," Granny explained. "It's my cake, isn't it? I've waited eighty years for that cake. And what I wanted, more than anything, was to eat a slice of it in peace, before forty people started singing at me and I had to blow out candles in front of a camera. So I did. The rose was delicious, by the way."

Nobody could argue with that. At six o'clock, the guests arrived, the candles were placed carefully around the gap, and the photographs showed a cake with a large piece missing and a very happy woman of eighty. Granny Rose said afterwards that it was the best birthday she had ever had. What she enjoyed most, she said, was watching her family argue about something that was, for once, entirely her fault.