A Mosaic of Stars: Short Stories From Other Worlds by Andrew Knighton Page B

leave him.
    Tod lowered the phone. Who cared about reputation compared with what this magnificent creature had done for him? It wasn’t like he could prove Angleby’s magic ape theory wrong. Not honestly, after what he’d seen.
    He rose and put an arm around the sasquatch.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to upset you. Could we maybe have a selfie, here on the beach, just for me?”
    The sasquatch nodded, smiled and pointed a finger at itself.
    “You want a copy too?” Tod shrugged. “OK then.”
    It wasn’t like he could share the picture with anyone else. Sasquatch on a beach – who’d ever believe that?

 
     
     
     
     
     
    A Pinch of Sorrow
     
    The funeral left Steve feeling hollow. Not grief stricken and lonely like his father. Not laughing at happy memories like his mother had wanted. Just empty, like his heart had been eaten away by her cancer. He longed to cry or laugh or do anything that made this feel real, that made it seem like this moment would pass. But there was nothing.
    As soon as he could he ducked out of the church hall, past the trays of limp sandwiches and his cousins smoking by the door. He nodded acceptance of their condolences, climbed into his four-by-four and drove.
    He travelled in silence. No radio. No CDs. Just the rumble of the engine. He wasn’t going to the office – his mother had always said he spent too much time there. And he couldn’t face his own house, still half-empty a year after Jen left.
    Instead he found himself in front of his parents’ house. He parked and walked inside on autopilot, found himself standing in the kitchen, kettle in hand, halfway through making a cup of tea he didn’t want. His eyes were caught by the cookery books beneath the window. The largest and most battered was an old hardback notebook, the one his mother had inherited from his grandmother and that she had kept adding to over the years. The one she had said should be passed down to him.
    He pulled out the notebook, fingered its brown-edged pages that smelled of flour and spices, hoping it might stir up his feelings. The recipes were full of his mother’s little jokes.
    ‘Add a teaspoon of joy.’
    ‘Mix with two measures of love.’
    ‘Just a pinch of sorrow.’
    But though every recipe contained an emotion, still nothing stirred in Steve’s heart.
    He stopped at a fruit cake, one she had made every Easter. She only went to church at Christmas, but something about Easter had mattered to her. When he left home Steve had copied out that recipe so that he wouldn’t miss his mother’s Easter cake. Though it never tasted quite right it was a reminder of her love.
    He needed that reminder now.
    He rummaged through the cupboards for sultanas and flour, beat eggs, stirred it all together.
    But the dough still didn’t taste right.
    He ran down the ingredients again. One line caught his eye.
    ‘A pinch of sorrow.’
    She had always treated those parts so seriously, and he had always ignored them as a strange little joke. But today of all days he wanted to respect her. So he felt inside himself, found the small pinch of sorrow that was all he could feel, and imagined adding it to the mix as he stirred.
    Still nothing. He knew it even before he dipped his finger in the thick batter. The whole thing was just another hollow gesture, like the party at the church, like watching her coffin go into the ground.
    He suddenly felt foolish, stood here with a bowl of cake mix when he should be mourning. Why couldn’t he even cry?
    Filled with frustration he flung the bowl at the wall. It shattered, spattering the paintwork with sticky blobs, shards of glass tumbling to the floor. He sank down onto cold tiles, staring at the mess.
    As if released from the ruins of the bowl, a memory came back to him. Squatting on this same floor when he was young, made to sit quietly after fighting with his sister, he had watched every movement his mother made. As his own anger passed he somehow knew that,