'Sunday Lunch at Port Stanley' by Cathy Lennon

Up here, at the co-ordinates of his final breath, the wind roars and buffets. They’re famous for sheep and penguins, these South Atlantic islands, but on the ascent she hasn’t seen either. It was someone’s hill to die on, she supposes, but she’ll never feel that it was his. The guide has led the small group further on, a tactful space left for her ancient grief. Eight thousand miles she’d come, a hollow pieta bearing empty space.

She braces her back against the biggest rock, imagines how he took cover here. Or tried to. She thinks about the soldier who shot her boy. Whether he went home to his own mother, gave her that special smile that wavers on the edge of every dream, sends cats paws over every memory.

In the moments that her son lay dying, she'd been at the kitchen sink, heedless, half a planet away. Knife in one hand, potato in the other, she’d been singing along to the radio while he was crying out for her. Now she cannot stand the taunt of bubbling pans, the cruel slab of sacrificial flesh roasting in the tin.

'I love your gravy, mam. Do loads. No one else makes gravy like you.'

She wonders if she should have brought a jugful. Sprinkled it like holy water on the ground. She hasn’t made a Sunday lunch since. Even when her daughter invites her to the carvery, she always chooses salad. Her husband moved to Spain and she doesn’t begrudge him his costa egg and chips. Up ahead the others stop, drop their rucksacks, uncap flasks. One even unwraps sandwiches.

If anyone could understand it would be them. She’s come now. She’s glad she did. If only so that she can know that she will always be famished.