Reviewed by Sonia

Tells the story of a young woman (?) and her path to forgiveness. Valerie grows to forgive her father for what she describes as desertion, as she remembers her childhood war time experiences, and understands why her father left her.

At times I found the use of inverted commas for the speech of the dream characters of young Valerie and her father, and the thoughts (?) or speech of the current dreaming Valerie confusing, I had to concentrate too hard when it should have been easy to distinguish who was talking.

I found the first paragraph laboured, I think it is meant to signal to the reader that the narrator is asleep (�cotton wool haze�, �flimsy nature of my white attire�), but this doesn�t become apparent until the end of the story.

Some little pedantic points:
�canopy overhead� - canopy = a hanging roof-like cover, thus overhead is redundant
�...Thames beneath�, there is nothing to link the word beneath immediately and obviously, I think the word is redundant in this sentence. Maybe its me, but I wanted to know how the blood contrasted with the clothing, and I needed more detail in this image to �see it�.

Don�t think I didn�t like the story - I did - it tells of events clearly, and sends its message, I just think some editing would make the message louder.