What bonds Karl and Faye and Vincent are variously rotten childhoods.

"I had a terrible, rotten childhood," he told a London newspaper in 1995.

The defendant had a rotten childhood, no education, a long record as a juvenile offender, not much of a chance in life.

You can't fall in love because you had a rotten childhood.

I thought maybe it was a bad romance, maybe even a marriage, or maybe a bad family, rotten childhood, or something.

And just maybe it's because we both had such rotten childhoods.

You're running from your feelings for me because your rotten childhood left you emotionally crippled.

So he told her he had a rotten childhood.

Furthermore, the outline of Patrick Melrose's story - rotten childhood, drugs, reform - turns out to be autobiographical.