Four Minutes to Save a Life: The most uplifting story about friendship, hope and community you’ll read in 2020

 He shoved the last few items on to the bonfire, pushing them so deep into the flames that his hands burned with them. Good. If he was brave enough, he’d step right into the heart of it and let the heat scorch all his skin off so he could grow a new one. A better one. If he was brave enough.

 But then, if you asked his parents, he’d always been useless.

 Charlie grabbed a fork and stabbed at those bits of his belongings threatening to catch the breeze and escape the fire. It had to go, all of it. He couldn’t change his past but he could burn it away, scrape it clear, wipe the board – all those metaphors and more besides.

 The binding of a book caught the flames and the pages, suddenly released, went fleeing up into the air. Charlie watched them go then took the last item out of his pocket. The burgundy leather shone in the light of the fire and slowly he opened it up and looked down at the picture – a goon of a young man, curly-haired, ruddy-cheeked, clean-shaven. What a twat!

 Charlie thrust the passport into the heart of the fire. It was consumed instantly but he stared at the spot where it had landed until his eyeballs felt like red-hot coals. It was gone. He was gone. He’d once read a quote from George Sand: ‘We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire.’ That’s what he’d finally done and now all that was left was to stand here until the flames were spent and he could rise up like a phoenix from the ashes.

 ‘Phoenix!’ Charlie scoffed into the spark-lit night.

 He was no phoenix. A phoenix was a bold, beautiful, bright-plumaged bird and he was just a run-of-the-mill idiot going to seed before he hit thirty and with enough mistakes under his sagging belt to last a lifetime. He really should just step into the flames with everything else and be done with it but, no, he still wasn’t brave enough.

 His parents had been right.