The Twelve Days of Christmas: 5
On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: five gold rings.
I woke up to find a note on the pillow beside me: “There are five gold rings hidden around the house. Find them, read the words, and the secret of my heart shall be yours forever.”
My true love never failed to be anything less than completely, foolishly and overwhelmingly romantic. Silly, sentimental gestures such as this kept our relationship alive and showed just how devoted we were to each other.
The first ring wasn’t difficult to find. As I stood in the bathroom staring at my reflection in the mirror and rubbing soap on my face, there it was on the second finger of my left hand. My true love had obviously slipped it on while we slept, and in my bleary state I hadn’t noticed until it was literally staring me in the face. I took the ring off and examined it carefully. Engraved on the inside was the single word - ‘LOVE’. Well, of course.
Walking into the living-room, my eyes scanned every item for clues, while the cat prowled through my legs and mewed in an effort to grab my attention. The bookshelves, it had to be the bookshelves. I ran my finger along the top shelf, head on one side, reading the titles of the various novels. Dragging out all the books that belonged to my true love, I started flicking through them. I struck lucky with the seventh one. Some of the pages had been hollowed out, and hidden within the cavity lay a single gold ring, as plain and simple a piece of jewellery as the first. It carried the word ‘MUCH’.
The discovery of the third ring demonstrated just how familiar with my bad habits my true love had become. I wandered into the kitchen, still yawning, and switched on the kettle. My gaze fell upon those disgusting herbal teabags, which had obviously been placed in a prominent position in the hope that I would feel guilty enough to try one. Apparently, they’re “good for me”. Not at this hour, they’re not. I need the seismic jolt of extra strong, non-decaffeinated, full-roast coffee beans pulsing through my veins first thing in the morning - not a delicate infusion of cinnamon and rosehip. Retrieving a teaspoon buried deep in the coffee jar, gold ring number three came into view perched atop the heap of brown granules. I quite forgot about coffee at that point, narrowing my eyes to read the word ‘I’ carved in the precious metal.
The cat was still pestering me. It was my true love’s pet, not mine. I tolerated it and fed it only when forced to do so, since the smell of cat food makes me retch. I turned my head away from the unholy stench as I ripped the lid from the tin of Horsemeat & Sardine Chunks and scraped some of it into the cat’s metal bowl, placing a plastic cover on the tin before the contents of my stomach responded by paying a return visit.
“There you go, cat. See what you make me go through just so you can get fed?”
The moggy looked up at me gratefully - well, in so far as cats ever look grateful for anything - and there, hanging from its collar, was the fourth ring. Before the poor animal had even managed to grab one mouthful of food, it was scooped up in my arms and complaining loudly as I hastily removed the collar. Ring retrieved, I dropped the cat unceremoniously back onto the floor.
‘LOVE’, ‘MUCH’, ‘I’ - and now ‘YOU’. It didn’t take a genius to work out the word that the fifth and final ring would reveal. Yes, “I love you SO much” too, I thought. I just had to find it to complete the sentence.
After three hours, I was exhausted and had run out of ideas. Our small flat had been turned upside down. Cupboards emptied, beds stripped, bathroom cabinets rummaged through, desk drawers pulled out. Even the dirty washing had been thrown into the machine just so I could sort it through and check that the ring wasn’t hiding in there. But still nothing. I was contemplating the almost unspeakable horror of putting on a pair of rubber gloves and excavating the kitchen bin when the doorbell rang.
“Recorded delivery for you, sir. Can you sign here?”
Slamming the door as the postman was just starting to exchange pleasantries about the weather, I tore open the small padded envelope. Inside, one small ring box. Inside the box, one gold ring.
I don’t mind admitting that I am the world’s biggest romantic fool.
Lining up the rings on the table, however, my beatific smile slowly faded. Where was the two-letter word I had been expecting? Where was ‘SO’? Where was it? There was only one grammatically correct sentence I could make using the words engraved on the five gold rings.
“I DON’T LOVE YOU MUCH.”
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