Flash Fiction
When I Was a Teenager
By Moira Flynn
- I found my dead mother at 8:50 on the morning of Saturday 31 March 1984. I was 13.
- My father constantly received letters wrongfully accusing him of not paying his bills.
- One year we used the gas cooker to heat the room.
- Social Services threatened to take me into care.
- Our electricity was reconnected in 1984. We had lived for nine years without.
- My father was made redundant in 1985.
- He refused to let Social Services take me away.
- I was bulled at school. In March 1985 my finger was broken.
- Our windows were smashed. We lived in poverty.
- I fell ill and nearly died in February 1986