Jennie Linnane

“The towering bulk of my stepfather was poised with hand drawn back about to strike the bleeding face of my mother. Fright found a voice: ‘Oh Do-o-on’t!’ I shrieked. ‘Don’t hit her – you leave her alone!’ I felt the raw tremulous sounds heave up from my chest and thought I would vomit. He swung around, his mouth agape, arm still aloft, and stared at me as though I were an apparition … stared at my child-frame vibrating now in a paroxysm of shock. ‘I’ll kill you!’ I promised ludicrously in a high shrill that reverberated in my skull and seemed alien to my ears, and I thought he would do the same to me. But he stopped, took a swaying stride forward and leaned on the dresser and, flinging out the great arm of which I was in mortal terror, he growled, ‘Get t’ bloody bed!”
― Jennie Linnane, Ironbark Hill