My Policeman by Bethan Roberts

Love can be a tricky emotion as it can so easily drift into a desire for possession. Love may be blind to start with, but after a while we seek commitment and a return of our invested feelings, otherwise that love can morph into something destructive. Very few people could agree to share the object of their affections but what if that was the only way to keep them?

This story begins in the 1950s and could only ever exist in that period of time. A time when women were expected to marry in their late teens or early twenties and single men were treated with suspicion. Companies and organisations chose family men for promotion and homosexuality was very rarely referred to.

Marion is a schoolteacher besotted by her friend's handsome brother Tom and, at 22, she now sees him as her only chance to be rescued from a life 'on the shelf'. She and Tom are friends, and meet regularly, but there are no outward signs of romantic love and he seems content to keep it that way. He spends just as much time with his friend Patrick as he does with her, but as it's not another woman, what could be the harm?

I thought this story was a truthful account of beliefs and behaviours at the time. There was a great deal of ignorance back then because there was simply no discussion on the subject of human sexuality and people either conformed or they were cast out. It seems amazing that all of this is such recent history.

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