Flash Fiction

When I Was a Teenager

By Moira Flynn

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