The Edge of Things

Some people seem destined, for whatever reason, to a life on the margins. Their alienation from the world they inhabit from society, family, friends sits on them like a dark cloak. It obscures them from scrutiny, preserves their isolation, enforces their loneliness. Lift that cloak a little, shed a little light into the shadowy recesses, and we find their stories reveal more of the human condition than the stories of those whose lives have been blessed with sunnier weather.

Ours is a world whose preoccupations with its busy priorities getting and spending, pleasure and the self make it ever easier to slip through the cracks that penetrate, unseen, its bright façade. And no one makes that uneasy slide from daylight to twilight more easily than the young.

THE EDGE OF THINGS is the story both of those who inhabit life's sunlit uplands, and of those who can perhaps never aspire to that apparently bright country.

It is the story of Simon and Sarah, born with the keys to ease, success and happiness already in their pockets. To themselves, and to those who know them, they are the perfect couple educated, successful, well-off. They can afford a life pleasantly removed from the dwellings of those who struggle to make a life at the foot of the hill. Perfection is their watchword, their aspiration and their assumptive birthright. And, yes, they are probably also happy after their fashion.

It is the story, too, of bright, young Chris, their second child, their son. He is a gilded youth to whom all comes easily, whose laughing life sparkles in sunshine. He inhabits the present moment only: the past does not drag at his fleet heels; the future does not intimidate with expectation. Now is Chris's time. No-one not his family, his friends, not those he comes across casually on his easy journey can dislike his straightforward open nature. He seems born for joy.

It is also the story however, of his sister Elly; and on Elly's life the sun does not shine. Birth set its mark on her: she was born with a hare-lip, a congenital disfigurement that was soon corrected by efficient medical professionals. Surgery and physiotherapy readily removed the outward signs of that mark; but Elly carried inner signs that were not so easily set right. Her birth-imperfection broke the code of perfection by which her parents' life was lived: and thus it cost her their love. Elly views life from the keen and sometimes bitter perspective of the outsider. It is a perspective that informs her unique and powerful artist s eye, and keeps her emotional life reserved and hidden reserved, that is, from all except Chris, for whom her love is unconditional and to whom her life is open.

At the last, and primarily, it is the story of Eldon. No advantage attended Eldon's childhood. He is the child of a traveller mother (for Maureen remains a traveller even though her days of trailer-based existence are long over) and a brief relationship with a black father. Maureen would love to love him but faced with the choice, she loves herself more. So Eldon lives the life of all unwanted children emotionally hand-to-mouth. Love is missing from his life and after a while resident with a grandfather who resents his presence, and then in a care home that does not care and is no home, Eldon finds himself, a young adult, adrift and alone. He has been equipped by the powers that be with the material necessities of survival not life. He has employment. He has a bed-sit. That is all.

All, that is, until Elly becomes the first though sadly not the last to discover in him the mainspring of sexual appetite. Her attentions slowly convince him that, though he may not yet be loved, he is at least desired. So begins the story of two young people, Elly and Eldon, dwelling...

Alan Robertshaw was born and brought up on Merseyside. A former headteacher, he has lived for the past thirty years just outside Doncaster. His working life was spent teaching in comprehensive schools in the former coalfields of northern England. He has drawn on a deep involvement with young people's lives in his writing. He is married to Margaret, without whose encouragement this book would not have been written, and has three children.