She bought the present, card and balloons the day before Sam’s sixteenth birthday.

In the evening, after her husband Jack went off on night shift at the steel plant, she blew up the sixteen balloons that all read, ‘Happy Birthday’ and hung them in the dining room.

Standing back, examining her labour of love, she could see blues, reds and yellows dance, and as the street light came on, outside, the balloons shifted and swayed on a warm draught in colourful transparency.

Later, in the kitchen, she made a coffee cake, and iced it with dark chocolate. When finished and the sponge had cooled, Tess filled the cake with fresh cream that oozed out from the sides in a creamy invitation.

She remembered Sam, as a little boy, standing table high, watching her make and bake. She recalled his little finger scooping out a dollop of cream and popping into his mouth when he thought she wasn’t looking.

‘My, a little mouse has been licking the cream,’ she’d say making a great show of searching for the furry culprit. Then Sam began to chuckle and she’d pick him up, tickling him until he confessed in a gale of laughter.

The phone rang out in the hall. Tess, answering it, heard her husband say, ‘I forgot. It’s Sam’s birthday tomorrow.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ve made his cake and bought sixteen candles.'

‘Tess. Please don’t.’ Jack’s voice croaked as if his throat was sore.

‘I must,’ she told him.

‘Sam won’t be home, tomorrow love,’ she heard her Jack say.

‘He might come home, Jack,’ she said. ‘He might.’

‘He didn’t come home last year.’ Her husband sounded weary.

‘Then why did you bloody ring?’ Anger flared up.

‘I don’t want you to go through all that palaver again, Tess. I don’t want to see you upset like you were, last year.’

Slamming the receiver down, Tess went back into the kitchen, and placed the cake in a cake tin. Leaving the kitchen, she went into the dining-room and, as she watched those sixteen balloons shift, hot tears scoured her cheeks. But dashing those tears away with the back of her hand, Tess wrapped Sam’s gift and wrote out his birthday card, adding sixteen kisses.