Flash Fiction for Valentines Day – Breakfast in Bed

Breakfast in Bed
His dad’s instructions had arrived 3 days before, printed in halting handwriting on a thin piece of lined paper. Telltale perforations told him it had been ripped from a notebook.
He’d followed the instructions to the letter but perhaps there was more to cooking that could be expressed in writing – the breakfast was a mess.
As he mounted the stairs, tray in hand, he could hear the muffled sobbing that filled every waking hour. Yesterday another letter had arrived, not the tattered, torn parchment his father used but a crisp letterheaded affair.
He was not surprised, when he pushed his mother’s door open, that she was clutching the letter.
‘Happy Valentines Day, mum,’ he said.
His mother smiled in reply through her river of tears.
Together they cried over burnt sausages and soggy toast.
His father looked on, a man in uniform, grinning out of a silver frame.