← Stories

Small Stakes: The Last Biscuit

Sim was moving out on the first of April, and nobody in the flat above the launderette had said very much about it.

He had got the apprenticeship. It was a proper one, four years, with a firm in a town two hours up the motorway that wired hospitals and schools, and he had wanted it more than he had ever said out loud. He had found a room near the depot. His boxes were already stacked in the hall, labelled in his small square capitals: KITCHEN. CABLES. BOOKS (SOME). KEZIA'S, ACTUALLY.

On his last Sunday, Kezia asked Mrs Okoye up for tea.

Mrs Okoye ran the launderette downstairs. She had run it for twenty-six years, and she knew everyone on the Green by their washing. In September, when Kezia and Sim had moved in with no ironing board and a job interview on the Monday, she had carried her own up the stairs and left it outside their door with a note: Bring it back when you buy one. They had never bought one. It was still in the kitchen, leaning by the fridge.

She came up at four with her coat on over her overall, and a packet of ginger biscuits she said nobody downstairs liked.

"Sit down," said Kezia. "I've made tea in the proper pot."

"You have a proper pot?" said Mrs Okoye. "Since when?"

"Since my dad came in March," said Kezia. "He brought it. He said a flat without a proper pot is a camp."

The tin

They drank the tea and ate the ginger biscuits, and then the shortbread from the tin, which Wren had brought round on Friday. They talked about the launderette, and Sim's new firm, and the man who had once tried to wash a duvet in machine three and flooded the whole floor. Mrs Okoye told it very well. Sim laughed so much he had to put his cup down.

At the end there was one biscuit left in the tin. A round shortbread, with a little pattern of holes on top, and sugar on it.

"Ah," said Sim. "The last biscuit."

"How do you decide?" said Mrs Okoye.

"Rock, paper, scissors," said Kezia. "It's the rule. Since September. Best of three."

Mrs Okoye looked at the biscuit, and then at the two of them, and then she smiled. "I haven't played that since I was at school," she said. "Go on, then. Who's first?"

Sim's secret

Kezia had played rock, paper, scissors with Sim for the last biscuit perhaps fifty times since September.

She had won perhaps six.

Sim had solved it, which she had always thought was impossible. It was a game of pure chance, wasn't it? Rock blunts scissors, scissors cut paper, paper wraps rock. Two players, three throws each: nine possible rounds. Three of them were wins for you, three were wins for the other person, and three were draws. If you just picked at random, nobody could ever beat you, not over a long time. That was the whole point of it.

"But nobody picks at random," Sim had told her, one night in November, with the last chocolate digestive in his hand. "Nobody. People think they do. They don't. You always open with rock. Always. And when you lose, you change to whatever would have beaten what I just threw. So I know what you're going to do before you do."

"That's cheating," Kezia had said.

"It's watching," Sim had said. "It's allowed."

And it was allowed. It was just watching. But it meant that Sim, who counted everything twice, had the last biscuit in the tin almost every time, and Kezia had stopped minding, mostly, because it was only a biscuit.

Mrs Okoye's turn

Sim played Mrs Okoye first.

"One, two, three," they said together.

Sim threw scissors. Mrs Okoye threw paper, her hand flat on the table.

"One to me," said Sim.

"One, two, three."

Scissors. Paper.

"Two."

"One, two, three."

Scissors. Paper.

"Three," said Sim. "Sorry."

"That's fine," said Mrs Okoye, cheerfully. "That's fine. It's your biscuit. You're the one leaving." She sat back. She rubbed her right hand slowly with her left, the knuckles, the way you rub a cold hand. Then she picked up her tea again.

Kezia had been watching her hands.

All through the game, Mrs Okoye had thrown paper. Three times out of three, her hand flat and open on the table. And Kezia, who worked in a classroom all week and noticed things about hands, thought about the launderette downstairs: twenty-six years of folding, and pressing, and carrying heavy wet sheets. She thought about the way Mrs Okoye held a pen, very carefully, and the jar of cream by her till.

A fist hurt. That was all. Mrs Okoye threw paper because making a fist hurt, and scissors hurt too, a little, and paper didn't. And Sim, who watched everybody, had watched her throw paper on the first round, and thrown scissors three times, and won.

He hadn't meant anything by it. He had only been watching.

But the game he was so good at had never been fair to the person with the stiff hands. And it had nothing at all to do with who ought to have the biscuit.

"Sim," said Kezia quietly. "Can you change it?"

Sim's rule

Sim looked at her. Then he looked at Mrs Okoye's hand, resting on the table, and Kezia saw him understand.

"Right," he said. "New rule. No hands."

"No hands?" said Mrs Okoye.

"No hands," said Sim. "Everybody names somebody else who should have the last biscuit. You have to say why. Out loud. And you can't name yourself."

"And then?" said Kezia.

"Whoever gets named most gets the biscuit," said Sim. "If it's a draw, we break it."

He looked at the biscuit, and then at Kezia, and then, for some reason, at the ironing board by the fridge.

"There's no way to watch anyone and win this one," he said. "The only way to play is to say something about somebody."

Three names

Kezia went first.

"Mrs Okoye," she said. "For the ironing board. In September we had no ironing board and no money and Sim had an interview on the Monday, and you carried yours up two flights of stairs and left a note. We've had it for seven months. We've never bought one. We're never going to buy one. It's basically your ironing board in our kitchen."

Mrs Okoye laughed, and then looked as if she might cry, and then laughed again.

"My turn," she said. "Sim."

"Not me," said Sim. "I've had every last biscuit since September."

"I can name who I like," said Mrs Okoye. "It's your rule. Sim. For the machines. When the new dryers came in October, the delivery men left them on the pavement and drove off, and it was raining, and Sim came down in his socks and carried two of them in with me. In his socks. I've never seen anything so foolish." She looked at him. "I'm going to miss you, young man."

Sim went pink, which Kezia had never once seen him do.

Then it was Sim's turn.

"Mrs Okoye," he said. "For the Tuesday in November. I had the interview for this job, the real one, the one I've got, and I'd spilled coffee all down my only shirt at half past seven, and the interview was at nine. And I came down in a panic and you took it off me and washed it and dried it in machine six and ironed it on the counter, all in twenty minutes, and you didn't charge me, and you said, 'Go and get it, then.'" He stopped. "So I did."

Nobody said anything for a while.

"Two to Mrs Okoye," said Kezia, eventually. "One to Sim."

Mrs Okoye took the last biscuit out of the tin. She looked at it. Then she broke it, very carefully, with her stiff fingers, into three pieces, not quite even, and put one in front of each of them.

"That's fine," she said. "That's the right answer."

Afterwards

When Mrs Okoye had gone downstairs, with the empty ginger biscuit packet in her pocket because she said she would recycle it properly, Kezia washed the proper pot and Sim dried it.

"The first game was better maths," he said.

"It was," said Kezia.

"You can't beat someone who chooses at random," said Sim. "But nobody does, so I always won. I was just reading people. And the second game was nothing but reading people." He put the pot on the shelf. "Except you had to say what you'd read. Out loud."

"Small stakes," said Kezia.

"One biscuit," said Sim. "In three bits." He looked round the kitchen, at the boxes in the hall, at the ironing board by the fridge. "Not that small."

On the first of April he drove away up the motorway in a borrowed van. On the kitchen table, under the lemon magnet, there was a note in small square capitals: KEEP THE IRONING BOARD. GIVE HER THE LAST BISCUIT.

The question for your own table

When your house plays for the last of something, does anyone always win it? Is the game fair to everyone at the table, including the person whose hands, or eyes, or patience are different from yours?

Something to do

Next time there is one of something left, a biscuit, a slice, the last of the crisps, don't play for it. Go round the table instead. Each person names someone else who should have it, and says why. You can't name yourself. Whoever is named most can have it, or share it.

Shared under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. More stories