Synopsis I Was Using When Submitting Broken to Slush-piles

Broken tells the story of Skunk Cunningham, an eight year old girl who is in a coma, trying to make sense of it all - from the very first time she saw Bob Oswald being violent to the very moment she decides whether to live or whether to die.

In-between, she tells the story of her life; beating Jed on X-Box, trying to work out what Broken Buckley's been doing in his box-room, and falling in love with Dillon, the orphaned gypsy boy who lives in Halford's car-park with his Romany Aunt and Uncle.

Skunk doesn't just tell her own story. She tells the story of Juanita, the au-pair her father loves more than his children, and Mr Jeffries, the man Juanita loves almost enough to overlook the fact he's an impoverished school-teacher who can't give her all the things Skunk's father can.

She tells the story of Mr and Mrs Buckley, and their schizophrenic son, Arthur, who Skunk and Jed and Dillon soon start referring to as Broken. As Mr Buckley tends corpses in the mortuary he manages, and as Broken slips further and further into madness, can this family survive?

She tells the story of Bob Oswald and his five delinquent daughters. In their Housing Association property, without the stress of a mortgage or the day to day restrictions of social responsibility, the Oswald's lot is a happy one.

Until Susan, Bob's fifteen year old nymphomaniac daughter, accuses Broken Buckley of rape.

And everything starts to go wrong.