Only the other day I recalled Tiki’s twenty-fourth birthday. My intention was to surprise her, knowing that she would have to walk through our house in order to open the doors to our garage.
Therefore, prior to me leaving to collect her from her place of work, at 6.35 p.m., I had lit the twenty-four candles. I had ringed the cake using the majority of them and employed those that remained by forming a small heart in its centre.
When she did open the doors to the garage and I had perceived no cheerful reaction on her face, I feared the worst.
Sure enough! Instead of her having come upon a cake with twenty-four candles aflame, there were that number of blobs of wax, with the red of their bases having melted into the cake’s icing and scarring the cake’s blue writing in the process.
While Tiki had sensed my disappointment, she loved the cake and was genuinely touched by the efforts I had made to surprise her.