A gentle prod of a hand in the back. No screech of brakes, just the sudden, ear-piercing scream...

JUDGE Val McDermid

WAFTER weeks of deliberation in our crime short-story competition, Julie Evans has scooped the £1,000 top prize.

Head judge Val McDermid said: “This was a really good story. All the clues were there, it built tension nicely and had an excellent ending. Julie should be very happy with it.”

Julie, 58, from Guildford, Surrey, is just finishing a creative writing Masters.

She says: “I’ve never written anything like this before but I thought I would give it a go. It’s a pleasure knowing people are reading your stories and enjoying them.”

e went to Wales every year – a bungalow in Rhyl, a holiday home owned by a distant great-uncle. A modest place, but it was close to the beach.

I think I’d assumed after my mother died that we wouldn’t go there any more, especially after my father married Frannie. She was as far from a person who would have enjoyed a week in Rhyl as you could possibly get. She’d been angling for Majorca or Greece.

I remember that she spent most days that week sitting in the garden smoking and sulking, never joining us on our trips to the seashore. We bathed a little, Dad and I, but the sea was freezing cold, even in July – it wasn’t a warm July – and Dad only went in for a minute, just long enough to give himself an excuse for a nip of brandy from his hip flask afterwards “to warm up”.

And in truth, I was well past the sandcastle stage and becoming selfconscious about displaying my budding breasts in a swimming costume.

So, I suppose it was a failure of a holiday already, even before Dad lost his footing at the top of a sand dune and sprained his ankle.

We left early after that. Frannie just wanted to get back to London. We took the train back and then headed down into the Underground for the final leg of the journey.

We’d barely spoken a word on the way. I was glad. When Dad and Frannie “discussed” anything, it was usually me that came off worst.

Dad blamed me for Frannie’s frustrations, as though it was the fact that they had to tow a 12-year-old around with them that was turning the marriage sour. I could have told him a year before that he was making a huge mistake, that she’d married him because she thought, as a lawyer, he must have money.

She hadn’t realised what a skinflint he could be. She might have bought herself a meal ticket, but all she was getting was canteen food.

The Tube platform at Euston was packed. We’d hit rush hour on the Northern Line. Dad was carrying both suitcases. This was the Seventies – we still had those hand-held, fixedcornered brown leatherette cases.

It was as though no one had yet invented the wheel. I had a rucksack on my back. Frannie carried her handbag.

She refused to carry a case – “Not with these, darling,” she said, flashing her bright pink fingernails and shaking her head at the close-fitting handles.

Dad always made us head for the entrance tunnel end of the platform when we were in the Tube. “Let’s get out of the crowd,” he said, and we fought our way through the bodies,

only to discover that there was no more space there than anywhere else along the platform.

It was hot in the station – far hotter than it had been in Rhyl – and Dad was sweating from carrying two suitcases whilst limping on his injured leg.

He put the cases down and took a cotton handkerchief out of the pocket of his jacket to mop his forehead.

I remember looking at him, thinking how old he seemed, and how foolish. Anyone looking at us would assume he was a widower with two daughters.

Frannie was 13 years younger than him but could easily have passed for his daughter and frequently did.

The train was announced… the next train will terminate at Morden, calling at Warren Street, Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road… I could hear the train in the tunnel, a distant rumbling that always gave me an excited frisson of fear, like the approach of a storm… Leicester Square, Charing Cross… I could see the light on the front of the train, illuminating the tunnel.

Dad picked up the cases, ready to be first on to the train… Embankment, Waterloo. It was then that it happened. It was a split-second thing, a gentle prod of a hand in the small of the back. I just remember the shock of the colours – the flash of bright pink against the black of Dad’s jacket. Pink on black.

He was unsteady on his feet from the sprain, pulled down by the weight of the cases.

There was no screech of brakes – I doubt the driver even had time to see him fall. Hardly anybody did – they would have carried on their journeys, boarded the train, jostled for seats and rails to hold on to, had it not been for the sudden, ear-piercing scream that Frannie let out.

“Oh my God! Jonathan… He’s fallen!” Everything then seemed to go very slowly in the minutes that followed.

People in uniform came and moved Frannie and I away from the track.

I think the train went on. Or went back. I wasn’t sure. Suddenly the mass of people had gone. I remember wondering how Frannie was going to explain herself when Dad confronted her with what she’d done. Then a lady came over and put her hand on Frannie’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, love. He’s gone. Was it your dad?”

Frannie shook her head. husband,” she said quietly.

My dad, I thought. He was my dad.

“My

When did I decide not to tell? Not sure. I thought about it of course.

And then I thought about what Dad being dead meant for me. Frannie was my stepmother, but she was never going to bring me up alone. I was a poor orphan child. Surely Auntie Linda couldn’t turn me away now?

Auntie Linda and Uncle George lived in a farmhouse in the country.

Alongside the cows, they had two dogs and a pony. I loved it there.

Every summer, after my two-week stay, I would say, “Can I live here with you, Auntie?” and she would say, “Oh no, love, your dad would miss you too much.” Well, that wasn’t true of course.

But now there was no Dad to miss me any more and Auntie Linda owed it to his memory to look after his only child. Naturally I didn’t let Frannie know that she’d done me a favour.

She knew that I knew – that brief exchange of glances just as Dad fell had told her clearly that I knew. I had something on her. And even if she dismissed the charge as the prattlings of a distraught child, there would always be a question there if I raised it.

And the record spoke for itself. Middle-aged solicitor, much younger wife, only a year of marriage.

The old man had been duped. The woman was a gold-digger who just couldn’t wait for him to die.

A policeman drove Frannie and

I home to our house in Clapham. After he left, we sat at the kitchen table and Frannie opened a bottle of gin. “Well…” she said.

“Well…” I replied.

“What happens now?”

“You tell me,” I replied. “You’re the grown-up.”

“There’ll be an inquest. They’ll want you to give evidence.”

I nodded.

“So,” she said, glancing at me over the plume of smoke from her cigarette. “Depends what you’re going to say.”

“You mean,” I replied, “am I going to tell them…?” “Yes.” I was silent for a

Frannie was 13 years younger than him but could easily have passed for his daughter