Sunlight

At the beginning of every May, the date was variable, a quirk in the alignment of buildings around the third floor flat of Sandra Cavendish allowed a triangle of sunlight to appear on the kitchenette’s west wall. It began as a faint luminescence, vaguely discernable about a foot up from the skirting. An isosceles of light lasting half an hour which brightened as the sun rose, easing from regularity to an elongated scalene as it slid to the floor, always to be extinguished before getting there. For only six days, dependent on clouds, the visitation waxed and waned. Then was gone. It coincided with the rising of Sandra herself, who was up at seven-thirty almost every day. She spotted it the first spring she lived in the flat, and thereafter every year. On these mornings she felt good. The corners of things weren’t as belligerent as normal, the pills not so bitter.

One morning she angled a compact so as to mirror the beam back into the room, across the sofa to the television. The following day, ready for the experiment, she bounced the light from kitchenette to a hand glass on the television that cast it onwards to a framed photocopy of Klimt’s kiss. By the end of the six days allotted her, she had included four reflective surfaces and a diminutive mirror ball.

Inevitably the solar event ended. Normality reasserted itself. But she left the mirrors in place, for already the countdown of months had begun until the sun, tired, weakened, returned southwards and the ping-pong lightshow reappeared.