‘It’s
not much really, but…’
‘No, it’s a lovely idea. Alex would’ve loved it.
He could have turned professional, but he said it was a living you
couldn’t rely on, and as we were getting married, he wanted
a safer, more reliable future for us. That’s what he said. Sounds
ironic now. I told him to go ahead with his pool and try to make a
living at it, but he refused. Maybe he was scared he might fail. I
don’t know. There he was turning his back on his dream for a
safe, reliable future, and then he got killed.’
And now you’ve got to get yourself together and look after his
child. That’s what’s important now.’
I nodded. This was Alex’s child I was carrying, a part of him
that would live on. I couldn’t think of a better reason for
getting on with my life.
‘He was a brave man. He never even stopped to think,’
said Jackie.
‘He didn’t have to. He instinctively did what was right,’
I answered, for the first time admitting what I’d always felt.
‘You shouldn’t have to think about something like that.
You just do what’s in your heart. He made a difference. He always
made a difference, whether it was to my life, the pub, the pool team,
or a young man being attacked.’
‘We need people like that,’ said Jackie.
I felt the baby kick inside me, as if in agreement. I had a new beginning.
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Judging
Comment
There are all kinds of bravery.
There is the bravery of the man, like Alex in Alyson Hilbourne’s
story, who tackles violent people without stopping to think of the
danger they might be in. Then there is the bravery that someone
like Alex’s wife, Ellie, will need to rebuild her life after
being widowed. Alyson’s story deals with both these kinds
of bravery.
And her story is well structured. The opening arouses our interest
because, for some reason, the narrator has experienced the knock
on the door in the middle of the night: the policeman’s knock.
But this time it is not a policeman, it is Jackie who runs the pub
where Alex was killed. And Jackie is used as the catalyst to allow
Ellie, the narrator, to unfold her story. The description of Ellie’s
grief being mixed with anger is well handled and believable, but
eventually she is able to articulate what she really feels: that
Alex was the kind of man who made a difference.
Having reached this point, the hopefulness and optimism of a new
life provides an appropriate ending. And a good ending should be
‘appropriate’: it doesn’t always need to have
a twist or to be terribly clever, but it does need to wrap up the
story. It needs to be appropriate.
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