‘It’s awful what comes into my head’

ERIN, 11, from Preston, walked through the site where the bomb exploded and witnessed the aftermath.

She was left unable to speak about what she saw, battling flashbacks and was scared to leave the house.

Her mum and her 14-year-old sister Caitlin, who were also at the concert, are trying to support her but feel helpless.

“It’s just awful what comes into my head and never comes out,” says Erin.

“It just takes me back and makes me feel scared. Sometimes it just comes out of nowhere and just pops up. Sometimes it goes from absolutely nothing down to the bottom of my feet and it just teleports up.

“And it’s like ‘don’t just teleport, give me some warning’.”

In tears, her mum says Erin wears a ‘mask’ to hide her feelings behind a ‘bright bubbly carefree’ persona.

On the night, she tried her best to protect Erin.

But she recalls: “Because of how I was holding Erin’s hand she had no choice but to look back.

“As a mum there is an overriding sense of guilt that I put them in that situation. They (the tickets) were Christmas presents and if I’d got a different venue or a different date then they wouldn’t ever have had to go through it.”

Erin has feelings of guilt and, seven months later, still can’t talk about what she saw.

“Sometimes I feel as if ‘why am I upset because I got out alive and I should just feel lucky and not feel this way’, she says.

“I just want to be normal. I just want to be like everybody else.

“I should have noticed the backpack was big and got the security,” she says.

She also struggles to sleep, imagining a ‘man with a rucksack’ creeping up the stairs.

Her sister Caitlin adds: “The fact someone so young has seen something so horrible with the world - has seen dead people – just isn’t what I would have hoped at 11 she would be concerned about.”

Towards the end of the documentary, Erin is starting to feel better.

“There’s still a scar but it’s not as red any more - you can’t really see it that much,” she says.