Cold Toast

Rooted in 70s and 80s Britain, this evocative flash
fiction collection captures the moments when girls
and women first glimpsed their own power – or lack
of it. 

Set against a backdrop of smoky kitchens,
playground politics, and flickering TV sets, these
stories trace the quiet rebellions and uneasy
compromises of lives shaped by expectation and
constraint. Two women swap secrets at the school
gates about an unfaithful husband. A father trades
his daughter’s first kiss for a fishing trip. A girl
becomes convinced the silent calls to her home are
from the Yorkshire Ripper.

By turns tender, raw, and defiant, this collection lays
bare the tension between freedom and conformity,
love and survival, and what it meant to come of age
in a world that wasn’t always ready for you.