If people are going through á dark time, 1 want them to see that you can overcome that

Lottie Tomlinson was just 12 when her older brother became part of one of the world's biggest bands.

- CHARLOTTE HEATHCOTE

But despite living the dream of flying around the world with Louis and One Direction, working as the X Factor stars' make-up artist, her life was soon touched by tragedy.

By the time she was 20, Lottie had lost both her mother and sister, and was struggling to cope.

Now she wants to use her story as a way to help others who are struggling to cope with grief.

She said: "If people are going through a dark time, I want them to see that you can overcome that.

"In my darkest times, I didn't think I'd be happy again.

"And there'll be a lot of people in that same place."

Lottie and Louis' mum, Johannah Deakin, died from leukaemia in 2016, aged 43, seven months after she was diagnosed. Loaded with grief, Lottie gave up her career to care for her five siblings - Felicite, then 16, twins Phoebe and Daisy, 12, and twins Doris and Ernie, two - along with her grandmother and the younger twins' father, Dan.

Describing the move back home to Doncaster, South Yorks, she says she had no regret: "I needed to be there for the little ones.

"It was just an instinct. And we've all got that in us because of how my mum brought us up. We're all very maternal and we all care about each other so much.

"My work was important to me but nothing's more important than your family and they needed me."

But while she put on a brave face, Lottie struggled behind the scenes.

"I thought that my life was never, ever going to be happy again," she recalls. "I thought that I would always live with this pain."

Just three weeks before Johannah died, Lottie remembers suffering one of her lowest moods.

She says: "We'd held on to a lot of hope so to find out that she wasn't going to make it was just unbearable. I remember sitting on the bathroom floor sobbing.