Thanks Tony, good points, noted.
Thanks, Elle. I guess my spell checker doesn’t speak French! Good points. I think I have a tendency to over-explain or I would have ended it at “He was my first”. Need to trust the reader more. The telly paragraph is a bit of a cop out – I’ll need to rewrite it.
I can’t remember what the original prompt was, but I put it away after the first draft and have just gone back to it.
Thank you both for taking the time to critique the piece.