A child doesn't ask to be born; they are brought into the world by their parents. If they're lucky, that child is nurtured, fed, loved, and guided by their mother and father. They are given a home and shelter, an education, something to occupy them, and they are protected from the worst the world has to offer.

This wasn't the case for Helen.

Told even from an early age that she was a mistake, and forced to feel that she should apologise simply for existing, Helen was born to a mother who did not seem to want her. Her early life was a series of abuses, mental and physical, and a daily struggle to become something better than the model presented to her at home.

What do you do when the one person who is supposed to be your loving guardian is instead your greatest persecutor? What can a child do? For Helen, there was only one option: endure. She survived years of her mother's abuse, and her father's neglect, and tried as well as she could to look after herself and her younger brother, Matthew.

This is an affecting memoir about Helen's tumultuous childhood, a story about the rotten core that can lie behind an unsuspicious facade. For every picture-perfect family there may be a child next-door, barely surviving.