best for FICTION
RUNNER-UP
When Dave and Shirley took over as the new tenants at the Nags Head, everyone voted them the perfect couple: Good looking, jovial and hospitable, they really were the ideal Landlord and Landlady. That was five years ago, and they were still there, enjoying the same success.
Shirley hadn’t changed at all, keeping herself in trim by exercising regularly and watching what she ate. She had her hair cut and dyed regularly and even had gel nails done every fortnight in garish colours. But looking now at Dave, she could not believe what the last five years had done to him.
His stomach hung like layers of molten lava running from an active volcano. His shirt collar was held together by his tie, the thickness of his neck preventing his top button being fastened and his eyes reduced to slits poking out of the bloating on his face.
He had just let himself go. The many nights of drinking had seen to that. Dave was one of the boys and he liked to prove it, enjoying frequent tipples on both sides of the bar. Shirley wished that he would change, but there was no use mentioning it again, he only laughed. That was until the Valentine’s cards arrived.
The postman was a little late that day: It was one of the busiest days of the year, but Shirley was hovering expectantly, and as she heard the plop of the letterbox, she rushed to pick up the four envelopes.
There was one addressed to her and as she took the card out of the envelope, a tear of joy escaped from her eye as she read the lovely verse, knowing by the handwriting on the envelope that the card came from her husband. The second card was addressed to Dave by herself, but there were also two other cards, both of them addressed to him.
Dave was shocked when she handed him the three cards. He knew by her handwriting the one that she had sent, but he looked confused, ‘Well, who are these other two from?’ He questioned, turning them over in his hands.
‘I don’t know, I thought that you would be able to answer that!’ She looked at him straight in the face, but there were no tell-tale signs.
Dave had been quiet for the rest of the day, and by the time he opened the bar in the evening he was quite pensive. He watched as the regular customers drifted in. The first to enter were the chaps from the Pool Team, but he thought that the cards looked like they had been written by the hand of a woman, though definitely not Shirley’s, so he could safely say that it was not one of the male clientele, which narrowed the field down a little.
The first single female to walk through the door was Jean, a rather plain divorcee somewhere in her forties. ‘Hello, Jean love,’ he said, welcomingly, ‘Had a nice day? Did you get many cards this morning?’ She looked confused. ‘What for?�
