Episode 5: No Escape (tx 18/2/76)

Kizzy is staying in the cottage of her new guardian Miss Olivia Brooke but is refusing to eat the food Miss Brooke makes. Running off to school, Kizzy is chased by a gang of young girls.

Come teatime, Kizzy is still eating crusts of bread and not Miss Brooke's nice food. Nosy neighbour Mrs Cuthbert sees Kizzy's crusts and suggests people will say Olivia is starving her. Catching onto Mrs Cuthbert's gossiping ways, Kizzy makes a point of putting food from the table on her plate.

Miss Brooke is anxious when Kizzy begins failing to return home after school. Twice she is found at the Admiral's mansion, her previous home. Olivia guesses Kizzy may be being bullied after school - perhaps the Admiral's field is her escape route.

Olivia is correct: Kizzy is indeed being chased but making good her escape over a fence into the Admiral's fields. But a few days later, the bullies chase Kizzy again and this time Kizzy falls over a trip wire left by Prue. Prue's gang chant cruel names at her and give her the bumps for her 'birthday' (Kizzy has no known birthday so the bullies want to do this daily) but in doing so they crack her head off a wall. Miss Brooke, secretly watching nearby, rushes over. The girls are horrified to see blood coming from a head wound.

An ashen, silent Prue is at home, and when Miss Blount calls to discuss the incident with Mrs Cuthbert, both wholly unaware of what actually happened, Prue bursts into tears and runs from the room.

Olivia and the Admiral worry that punishing the bullies might make matters worse for Kizzy. Clem Oliver, a friend of Kizzy's, arrives at the cottage and says that he and the older boys have decided they'll stop the girls bullying Kizzy.

Kizzy dreams of running away with Joe the horse and plots their escape. But the next day when Kizzy visits Twiss, she discovers Joe has died. Peters returns Kizzy to the cottage, where Olivia urges Kizzy to try to be friends with the girls, for her own sake.

Next day at school, some of the girls ask Kizzy to join in their game of hopscotch but she sits alone reading. When the girls suggest she won't join in because she can't do it, she gets up, has a go and returns to her book without saying a word.