Without warning and only sometimes

Kit de Waal and her brother and sisters had a hard childhood in the West Midlands.

Her Irish mother didn't feed them, didn't believe in Christmas or birthdays, and thought the world would end in 1975.

Her father saved all his money to return to the Caribbean, where he planned to make a new life without them.

At school, their faces just didn't fit in. This is the story of how Kit and her brother and sisters helped each other escape, and what gave Kit the strength to keep living.