When his father dies and he reneges on the deal, Cash finds herself trapped in a nightmare and trying desperately to escape. This man controls the purse strings and Cash’s freedom. She lives in a lovely house, attends dinner parties, and even has the holy grail, an aga….however she is kept on a tight leash by this man who has had a hold over her since she was in her teens. She gets so desperate that she even contemplates taking a windowless, electricity-less room in a man’s house which he offers for free, on the proviso that she sleeps in his bed with him for 3 or 4 nights a week.Ĭash appears to fall on her feet at one stage when her gay ‘friend’ asks her to pose as his wife in order for him to remain in his father’s will. The total upheaval of Cash and her daughter, Biddy’s, lives every time they can’t afford to pay the extortionate London rents for pokey bedsit accommodation in ropey areas is both heartbreaking and massively frustrating.Ĭash has to ask over 80 estate agents to help her find accommodation when landlords won’t accept single mothers on benefits. To having to use food banks just to feed them both. From having to work in a peep show whilst pregnant in order to save enough money for a deposit on a flat for when her daughter is born.

What Cash has produced in Skint Estate is a real eye-opening, punch in the gut of a book, one that I feel everyone needs to read.Ĭash takes us through her life as a single mum living way below the poverty line, from the moment she takes a pregnancy test in a faeces smeared train toilet, with a busted up face having fled her abusive partner, right through to securing the deal for her book.Ĭash bursts into your brain with her straight talking, no-nonsense delivery of some of the most horrific and harrowing of times in her life. I picked it up intending to have a flick through it and park it in the book trolley until closer to the publication date, however, once I’d started reading I just couldn’t put the book down. I used to follow Cash Carraway on Instagram so when Matt at Ebury Press got in touch to ask if I’d like a copy of Cash’s debut memoir Skint Estate, I knew I had to check it out.

Skint Estate by Cash Carraway