She pulled together a glass of orange juice with a thick doorstop of a roast chicken sandwich and headed back to her office where she tucked in. When her mum had first started…drifting…and it became clear she needed around-the-clock care, it had been a no-brainer for Kath to move back in to the family home. Her mum had been rattling around alone in the four-bed detached in Sale ever since Kath’s father had died the year before. After tidying up all the remnants of her dad’s will and estate, Kath had rented out her flat in Stockport and moved into the big front bedroom. She and her brother had reconfigured the house so that her mum could stay on the ground floor—there was a small walk-in shower room and toilet downstairs already, so they’d only needed to rearrange furniture.

With a small sofa and a TV, the old dining room became the new living room, somewhere Kath—and now the carers—could sit in the evenings and still be able to hear her mum in the next room. Her dad’s study-cum-library was just big enough for a single bed and an armchair, so it was transformed into a bedroom for her mum. The front room had been turned into Kath’s office. It was cold in winter and too distant from the rest of the house to serve as a bedroom. Kath had worried about keeping her mum within earshot.

As workplaces went, it wasn’t that bad. And again, she was thankful that she was able to work from home, for the most part. She went into the city one afternoon a week to meet with Jude, her manager. Jude had been instrumental in transitioning Kath’s role from office based to home based. Each Wednesday, she spent the afternoon catching up on clients and forthcoming work with Jude at the office, while Mrs Davey, a neighbour from across the road, sat in with Kath’s mum. She always brought over a small cake and sat in the living room chatting around whatever TV programmes they watched until Kath got back at five. She seemed to genuinely enjoy her Wednesday afternoon visits. And the twenty quid Kath slipped her on the way out didn’t hurt, of course.

Her phone rang just as she finished her sandwich. She swallowed the last mouthful quickly and answered it on the fourth ring.

“Hi Kath, it’s Jude.”

“Hey, how are you?”

“I’m good. Listen, just a quick call—any chance you could come in earlier tomorrow? I know it’s difficult with your mum and all, but I’ve got a family thing I need to get to and have to leave earlier than normal. Sorry, I would have asked sooner, but I completely forgot it was this week.”