Petal Afrid is a young woman in her twenties, the mother of twin baby girls and the wife of a loving husband, Sami. Yet as Petal recounts the story of her own childhood, we see how deeply she was affected by her own mother, who abused her eldest daughter physically, verbally and emotionally as punishment for trivial or imagined misbehaviour, locking her all night in the larder if she dared to stand up for herself. When Petal's kind and loving father is driven away from his home by his wife's bullying and the favouritism shown to Petal's brother, Petal is left to fend for herself and to try to look after her younger sister until she can find a way out of her mother's flat and make a life for herself.