very special type of pile. I spotted them in a back corner, piles of cardboard boxes, each box a couple of inches high, their colours faded. I dived on my find like a hawk on its prey, quickly discarding the old games of Snakes & Ladders, and also the tatty modern jigsaw boxes with their twee photos of Swiss mountains.
From years of practice, I knew what I was looking for and I descended the first pile and the second, and the third, searching desperately, my hope dwindling with each box I put aside. My searcher's fervour died completely as I lifted the final box from the floor and discarded it. No decent puzzles; my heart fell.
"Good Evening, Miss," a voice behind me made me jump and I turned sharply to find a short, balding man in the thickest glasses I had ever seen smiling enquiringly at me. "Can I help?"
"Jigsaws," I replied shortly, then remembered myself, stifled my disappointment and continued, "have you any wooden jigsaws, please?"
The man frowned, my spirits lowered, but then I saw it, a flicker of something behind those spectacles and my excitement began all over again.
"I might have something for you, Miss, but it's in need of some TLC."
I nodded eagerly - TLC I could handle - and followed him as he turned and headed towards a counter I had initially thought was just another load of junk. He went behind the large wooden sideboard and I hovered on the other side expectantly. He reached down and lifted up a box, a dark wooden box that screamed age and my heart leapt into my throat. Great Grandmama had had a few of these, hers were early Victorian, and I had only been allowed to play with the special puzzles at Christmas and under supervision.
"There is no image on the lid, Miss, and the pieces themselves are stained to the point where there's barely anything to see," my seller sounded almost apologetic as he slid back the lid, "but it is eighteenth century."
SPOTLIGHT AUTHOR IWACA
28 | IWACA
ONE MORE PIECE