The Sunday Times Bestseller

It was as if Pandora’s Box had been opened. The course of my life changed and in one moment, I went from being a cherished child to an abused child. I was marked.

Adopted at birth in 1956, Emily enjoyed a golden childhood, until at age seven, her mother began to see her as a rival and turned on her. She developed a habit of beating her and encouraged her new husband, a narcissistic bully, to whip her. By the time Emily was twelve, he was sexually abusing her.

Emily found her way into the care system, where she was vulnerable to the worst excesses of male violence. She ran away to London and was drawn into life as an underage prostitute, servicing perverted clients. It was only when she was almost murdered that she turned her life around.

Set principally between 1966 and 1972, Runaway is a shocking book that brilliantly captures the sleazy Soho of the period and exposes the frightening conditions in which many children were kept in care.