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Sara looked around her room. It looked boring but she didn’t recall it being so dull before going into the care home. The single wooden bed sat in the corner opposite the cupboard that held all cloths and her few toys.
She had gone into care will her father got over his drinking problem and had enjoyed the freedom. At home she had to stay in and was only allowed out when she was told to go to school or go to buy another bottle of whiskey for her father. Even though she was only 15 she looked older and therefore it was easy to go and buy the whiskey as long as she didn’t go to the same place to often or buy it at her local shop where they knew her age.
The care home had been a taste of freedom and Sara didn’t know if she could go back to her old life.
Sara herd footsteps coming up the stairs. The heavy footfalls told her it was her father, hopefully with her suitcase.
“Good to be home then, sweet heart,” he said as if she had just been on holiday, “I was thinking if you wanted to go out and get some take-away or something tonight, to welcome you home. And I promise there will be no drinking what-so-ever”
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, Sara thought, if her father was proposing that they get take-away maybe he had been cured.
“Yeah that would be cool,” she said. Sara had planned to phone her friends tonight as she hadn’t had much time to phone people at the care home but that would wait.
The curry was only warm when they got home so Sara put it in the oven for a few minutes to warm it up. They ate it in the living room watching the DVD Sara’s dad had insisted upon renting, ‘Pretty Women’, it was Sara’s favourite but she knew her father hated it.
Sara went to bed that night feeling happy. The care home had been a taste of freedom but coming home to her father just showed her how much she had missed him.
The next morning Sara was woken by her father with breakfast. After eating Sara dressed and went down stairs to find her father preparing to go out.
“Thought you might like to go shopping,” he said handing Sara her coat. This was very strange. Sara’s father had never proposed that they go shopping together. Shopping had always been Sara’s job.
“Yeah, Ok,” Sara said. She had actually been planning on phoning Charlotte but that could wait.
They got back at five with arms laden with shopping bags. Sara’s father had bought nearly everything Sara wanted plus some bowling shoes saying he needed a hobby now.
Sara made them supper that night. She made fish and chips knowing that it was her fathers favourite.
I bed that night she remembered about phoning her friends but she didn’t worry about it, she would see them next week at school anyway.
The next week went in a blur of days out with her father. Sara fell asleep on the last night of the holiday feeling the happiest she thought she had ever felt before.
School always used to be a haven for Sara and she had surrounded herself with her friends and hoped she never had to go home. Today was different. Today Sara didn’t want to go to school and she only managed to drag herself out of bed because her father had given he breakfast in bed again.
“Last visit from social services for 6 months today sweetheart,” he said with a smile.
“Grrr,” Sara moaned as he opened the curtains.
“I know you would like another day of holiday sweetheart but school is a must and I’m sure Charlotte and Isabelle will want to see you again,” he said placing the tray on the bedside table, “see you in a bit”. He closed the door on the way out and Sara dragged herself out of the warmth of her bed.
The drive to school was uneventful. Normally Sara would take the bus but her father had offered to drive her and getting a lift meant she could avoid the annoying new year sevens.
At school she met up with Jessie and Charlotte in the registration room. They came bouncing over and each hugged Sara in turn.
“Hey Sara you never phoned me nearly all summer!” Charlotte exclaimed
“Sorry, I was kind of busy and I went away for a bit” Sara had decided even before going back to school that she wouldn’t tell her friends about where she had really gone over the holiday. They all were so worried about their reputation that she wasn’t sure they would want her around. It had almost been to much when she had finally admitted that her father had a drinking problem and she had lied to get out of that.
They met up with Isabelle and Maz in English first lesson and they spent the time catching up much to the annoyance of the teacher.
Maz had been to Spain for two weeks and was very brown, Isabelle, who was almost as brown had spent the holiday on the beach with a book and a bikini. Charlotte and Jessie had both been to camp and had spent the time looking up the boys in the next door camp ground.
Sara made up a story about staying at her Gran’s house for most of the holiday because her Gran needed to move some things around and wanted some help. This was untrue of course as Sara had no grandparents; they had died before she was born.
The day passed slowly as Sara wanted to go home and finally at the end of the day she almost ran from the bus stop to her front door.
There was a woman from social services there coming to check Sara was Ok and settling back down again.
“So, how’s the last week been then?” the woman asked Sara. She sounded as if she were talking to a four year old.
“Well it was better than the children’s home to say the least,” Sara replied
“Yes your father said you have been doing some interesting things recently. Ok now down to business, how are you settling back in?”
“Fine”
“And you’ve had no arguments worth speaking of? Nothing to do with drinking to much,” Sara stared in shock at what the woman was implying.
“No, he’s better now” Sara retorted
“Ok, and you haven’t had to do anything out of the ordinary?” Sara’s shock deepened.
“What are you implying? Are you saying dad is still ill? Is that it?” Sara said angrily.
Her father put an arm around her shoulder, “calm down sweetheart, she’s only doing her job, you can’t blame her for that”
“Well, yes I think that is all. Thank you for your time, I’ll see you in six months. Oh yes and Sara, here’s my number if you should need it.” The woman left in a hurry and Sara stared daggers into her back all the while.
The next month went in a dazed blur of school and homework. The bond between Sara and her dad got even stronger and their weekend trips out got more and more unusual.
The argument between Sara and the Social Services woman was soon forgotten and Sara threw the card with her number on it in the bin. She made sure her father was around so he would see this act of trust in him.
Sara felt truly happy.
Until one day.
Sara had had a boring day at school and was waiting to get home to tell her father about it but when she got there she found the door locked.
He must have gone to get some more milk from the shop Sara thought not worrying.
At 7pm Sara began to worry and by 8.30 she was panicking.
It wasn’t until 9 that she heard his footsteps on the gravel path, they were irregular.
Sara ran down stairs and unlocked the door to find her father sitting on the porch with a bottle of whiskey under his arm.
“D-dad?” Sara ask.
“Wha’” came the slurred reply
Sara shut the door and walk miserable up to her room. She could only think of one thing. Over and over.
So it starts again.
Sara spent the rest of the next day in her room. No trips out, no laughing. Her father didn’t even come to find her. He arrived home from the pub at 11.30 and fell asleep on the sofa. It was the same on Sunday and When Sara got home on Monday he still wasn’t there.
The next week Sara spent in trance until Friday afternoon on the bus home.
“Hey you’re the girl that guy keeps talking a bout at the pub.” It was Anthony Hanley. His parents owned the Stag Arms where Sara’s father drank.
“Yeah, said something ‘bout social services putting you in care for the holiday ‘til he got over bein’ alcoholic”
Sara went white.
“I thought you said you spent the holiday with your Nan?” Charlotte said, “and you said he was over the drinking problem.”
“Yeah he is! and I did go to my Gran’s place. He must be confused” Sara tried to get things back.
“No, he definitely said his daughter ‘Sara’ an’ he’s got same surname as you”
Sara felt sick.
She got off the bus at her stop and ran home hoping, wishing she would find her father at the door and supper on the table.
Tears flooded her eyes and blurred her vision as she unlocked the door and ran up to her room to cry herself dry.
The next month passed in slow pain of arguments and buying whiskey for her father. Charlotte, Isabelle, Maz and Jessie had been avoiding her since the Friday on the bus and Sara spent the time out of lessons hidden in some dark hole in the library.
On Friday Sara got home to find her father lying on the siting room floor with an empty bottle of whisky spinning next to his right hand.
Sara went up to her room and locked the door. At 10pm hunger got the better of her and she crept down stairs to get a snack. Hopefully her father would be in the pub.
No such luck.
“Hey, AY, sweetheart, you wanna go get another bottle fer papa?”
“No dad, you’ve had enough”
“Eh, whata you imp-imp-implying?”
“Dad your really drunk,” Sara said with tears running down her face.
He tried to stand up but ended falling on the sofa.
“Talk to me in that tone of voice and there’s a belt in my room just for you”
This time he did manage to pull himself up. The look of menace on his face was plain to see and it scared Sara
“Dad you’re an alcoholic..” Sara began but her fathers fist fell before she could finnish.
“Call me that name and I’ll hit you again, you’re a slut, and an cow and waste of space” He said before falling back onto the sofa.
Sara felt the side of her face and blood trickled between her fingers. She ran to her room to hide.
The next day her father came and trashed her room throwing all the new clothes he had bought her onto the floor and breaking her radio and light.
Sara spent the entire time locked in the bathroom in the bath with cold water pouring over her naked body shivering with cold, yet too scared to move.
That night she piled all her belongings into a pile in the middle of her room. She had decided it was time to make him pay for what he had done and no matter how much she loved him he would have to pay dearly.
She looked at the phone on her desk. If only she had that number the woman had given her, yet that was no longer an option and this was he only way she could get him to realise.
Even if she never saw it.
The paper lit first then the books and finally the cloths only now did she pick up the phone.
“Yes,” the voice at the other end said “emergency services, what is the problem”
“Hello, my house is on fire and my father is too drunk to notice.”
Tears ran down Sara’s face. What was she doing? She didn’t want to die. She wanted to go back to when it was good and her father loved her.
She let out a sob and dropped the phone.


The hospital bed was lumpy and uncomfortable. Sara had been looking at the same white tiles for the last few days.
Since she had woken up nobody had come to visit except a couple of police officers to whom Sara had admitted everything and social services to whom she had begged to stay with hr father and they had refused.
Pain covered Sara’s entire body as the burnt skin tried to heal itself. Sara tried to cry but she couldn’t. The tears wouldn’t come.
On the sixth day Sara had two visitors, Charlotte and Isabelle.
“Why didn’t you tell us it was this bad, Sara? We could have helped,” Charlotte asked looking deeply upset.
“You would have deserted me,” Sara replied weakly.
“No, we would have helped, I promise,” Isabelle put in.
“But you did desert me, soon as you found out and you can’t say you didn’t”
“Sara, we were only ignoring you for a week and that was because you had lied to us. We realised after that that you only lied because you didn’t want us to hate you for it. And if you want to know, we don’t hate you. Sara we were trying to talk to you but you were avoiding us.”
Sara said nothing for a while and soon they left. After that Sara cried. Tears stained her cheeks and soaked her pillow.
Her friends visited everyday after that and slowly Sara got better, the ugly scars that covered her skin faded slightly so they weren’t quite of obvious and, after a session with Maz who wanted to be a beauty therapist, Sara found a way of applying makeup so they almost disappeared.
The only thing that left Sara feeling really upset now was that her father hadn’t visited.
After a few weeks Sara moved into a care home and began to settle in.
It was a Friday afternoon when Sara was in the garden playing with some of the younger children that he came.
He walked into the garden and stood and watched for nearly a minute before Sara turned and saw him.
Sara ran to him and they hugged as if they hadn’t seen each other in years.
“Sorry I didn’t come to visit you sweetheart I had a prior engagement in rehab,” he said through sobs.
They spent the afternoon together under the watchful eye of the care home staff. He was only allowed accompanied visits and he had someone to check up on him weekly in his new home and slowly both managed to pull their lives back together.
Sara never managed to persuade social services to let her move back in with him but she did manage to persuade them to let her have unaccompanied visits to his house and after a while things felt like they had done before only now Sara’s father had to drop her off at the care home. Sara even had her own room in the new house with a new bed and furniture, a TV that had been a present and a new radio to replace the one lost in the fire.

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I think I might change the end of this as its a bit too nice. Crit would be very useful

Let's take a look at the first couple of paragraphs:

Sara looked around her room.

In terms of opening lines, this does not entice me to read further. It's not interesting or engaging — there's nothing about this sentence that pushes me to keep reading. First impressions count, and this is a pretty generic sentence. You may want to find some other way to start the story. Focusing on some aspect of her furniture and beginning the story with it, or even starting the story with It looked boring is more interesting than the way it currently begins.

It looked boring but she didn’t recall it being so dull before going into the care home.

Again, not very exciting. I know it's not an action/adventure story, but it doesn't need to be — it does, however, have to engage the reader somehow. As the reader, I can confidently say I'm not engaged. Show, don't tell; instead of letting us know it's boring, describe the room in a way that makes us better understand its boringness. What's so bland about it? Explain.

The single wooden bed sat in the corner opposite the cupboard that held all cloths and her few toys.

Again, you're not really highlighting what exactly about the room is boring. Is it the lack of colour and vibrancy? The spartan furniture? The childishness of having toys?

She had gone into care will her father got over his drinking problem and had enjoyed the freedom.

"Will her father got over his drinking problem," should be, "While her father got over his drinking problem."

At home she had to stay in and was only allowed out when she was told to go to school or go to buy another bottle of whiskey for her father.

There should be a comma after "home". Also, a bit of an awkward sentence, mostly because of the second half. "Go to buy another bottle of whisky," should be, "to go buy another bottle of whisker for her father."

Even though she was only 15 she looked older and therefore it was easy to go and buy the whiskey as long as she didn’t go to the same place to often or buy it at her local shop where they knew her age.

"15" should be written out, so, "fifteen", and there should be a comma after it. "Same place to often" should be "same place too often."

Also, this is a major run-on sentence, and you need to punctuate it appropriately. I'd suggest breaking it into a couple of smaller sentences. The easiest place to segment the sentence would be after, "Even though she was only fifteen, she looked older." I'd suggest snipping out "and therefore," because it makes the story sound very wooden and overly formal. Start the second sentence at "It was easy," etc., and stick a comma after "too often."

Also, I'd suggest changing "her local shop" to "the local shop," simply because:

her local shop where they knew her age.

the two mentions of "her" in such a short space is kind of awkward.

You'd then have:

Even though she was only fifteen, she looked older. It was easy to go and buy the whiskey as long as she didn’t go to the same place too often, or buy it at the local shop where they knew her age.

And the last sentence of the paragraph:

The care home had been a taste of freedom and Sara didn’t know if she could go back to her old life.

Dramatic effect! Break the sentence into two shorter ones, so something like:

The care home had been a taste of freedom. Sara didn’t know if she could go back to her old life.

Or, if you don't want to do that, cut out "and", replace it with an em dash. Do something to make the sentence more interesting.

Some other notes:

- Format. Please. Double-space at the end of every paragraph.

This passage:

Sara looked around her room. It looked boring but she didn’t recall it being so dull before going into the care home. The single wooden bed sat in the corner opposite the cupboard that held all cloths and her few toys.
She had gone into care will her father got over his drinking problem and had enjoyed the freedom. At home she had to stay in and was only allowed out when she was told to go to school or go to buy another bottle of whiskey for her father. Even though she was only 15 she looked older and therefore it was easy to go and buy the whiskey as long as she didn’t go to the same place to often or buy it at her local shop where they knew her age.
The care home had been a taste of freedom and Sara didn’t know if she could go back to her old life.

becomes formatted like this:

Sara looked around her room. It looked boring but she didn’t recall it being so dull before going into the care home. The single wooden bed sat in the corner opposite the cupboard that held all cloths and her few toys.

She had gone into care will her father got over his drinking problem and had enjoyed the freedom. At home she had to stay in and was only allowed out when she was told to go to school or go to buy another bottle of whiskey for her father. Even though she was only 15 she looked older and therefore it was easy to go and buy the whiskey as long as she didn’t go to the same place to often or buy it at her local shop where they knew her age.
The care home had been a taste of freedom and Sara didn’t know if she could go back to her old life.

See the space between the two paragraphs? Each paragraph should be formatted like this.

- Proofread. If you run this through spell-check, it'll appear as if you've spelled everything correctly — but you actually haven't. There's lots and lots of spelling mistakes in this story that either weren't caught by Spell-Check or were (and you replaced the misspelled word with the wrong word.)

Observe:

Sara herd footsteps coming up the stairs.

That should be "Sara heard foosteps."

I bed that night she remembered about phoning her friends

This should actually be "in bed".

It had almost been to much when she had finally admitted that her father had a drinking problem and she had lied to get out of that.

should be "It had almost been too much."

You get the idea. Lots of spelling mistakes; proofread and correct.

- Dialogue. Remember to punctuate it properly.

This:

“Fine”

should be punctuated with a period (or an exclamation mark, depending how enthusiastic Sara is).

“Fine.”

In the same way:

“No, he’s better now” Sara retorted

The word "now" should be followed by a comma, so:

“No, he’s better now,” Sara retorted

(And, of course, there should be a period at the end of the sentence, after "retorted".)

Her father put an arm around her shoulder, “calm down sweetheart, she’s only doing her job, you can’t blame her for that”

The comma after "shoulder" should be a period. "Calm" should be capitalized, and there should be a period after "That":

Her father put an arm around her shoulder. “Calm down sweetheart, she’s only doing her job, you can’t blame her for that.”

(I'd also suggest putting a period at "job" and starting the next sentence at, "You can't blame her...")

For the most part, you're pretty good about this, but there are still blocks of dialogue which you completely neglect to punctuate.

- Emotion. I didn't really empathize with Sara or her father, or any of their problems. Why? Because I had no emotion invested in them. This could mean I'm a heartless horrible person, but it also means that you haven't really conveyed much emotion in the narrative. The story rushes along without really allowing us to have time to get to know Sara and her father, without really exploring their lives in-depth. And because this entire story is the kind of tale fuelled by emotion, it falls flat. So, slow down. Give us time to know Sara and her father. There are a lot of unnecessary anecdotes about Sara and her father which would be slightly more necessary if you allowed their personalities to shine through the dialogue, and if you slowed down and took the time to explore their characters during these anecdotes.

- Clichés. You've used a myriad different clichés in this story, most notably the Evil Abusive Alcoholic Father and the Annoying Patronizing Social Worker. This partly results in the characters becoming caricatures instead of three-dimensional, interesting people (and as a result, curtails our emotional investment into the story), and it partly gives us a story that has been done to death. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing — but it becomes even more necessary for you to infuse some originality and emotional and interest into this story.

I admit, the Abusive Alcoholic cliché frustrates me on a really deep level, because not all abusive fathers (or people in general) are alcoholic and not all alcoholics are abusive. Alcoholism is a crappy excuse for abuse, and it's a cop-out. Instead of giving the father depth, you've chalked up all his problems to alcohol — so, basically, we've got a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde Syndrome going, except that even Dr. Jekyll had his own issues and it was acknowledged in the narrative. Here you've made it seem as if the father is a wonderful, amazing, well-adjusted person except when he turns to the bottle. And that's, like I said before, a cheap way of explaining character issues — the alcoholicism becomes a scapegoat. And that's not good. I'm being very repetitive, but not all alcoholics are abusive, so clearly alcohol isn't an adequate excuse. There has to be something beyond it, something in his inherent character that makes him do these things, something that the alcohol heightens. Make it realistic. Turn the cliché on its head and I'll be impressed.