**Diary Entry**
I’ve lived long enough to see life in all its shades. At 56, I carry scars that even experience couldn’t shield me from. My husband and I spent years drifting between rented flats in Manchester. Once, we owned a small one-bedroom flat, but we sold it to cover the medical bills for my mother-in-law, who battled a cruel illness. Our children moved away long ago—each to their own city, their own worries. Left alone, we relied on ourselves and my mother, who’d always been my rock.
A few years back, Mum suffered a stroke. I poured everything into saving her—doctors’ visits, medications, nights at her bedside. When she improved, I hired a carer so I could return to work. Rent, utilities, Mum’s medicines—without my wages, we’d have sunk. The carer, a young woman named Emily, seemed perfect: she took only Mum’s pension, never asked for more, and acted as if she truly cared.
Mum and I never argued. She understood why I couldn’t be there every minute and supported hiring help. I thought we’d struck a fragile balance—Mum safe, looked after. Then her health worsened again. My husband and I made the hard choice to move in, taking shifts by her bed, changing sheets, cooking, watching her every breath. We gave all we had to make her feel loved.
But what came after shattered me.
Days after Mum’s passing, a solicitor called. Still raw with grief, I sat in his office and heard the words that broke my world: Mum had left everything—her house, the cottage in Cornwall, her savings—to Emily. That quiet, smiling girl who’d seemed so kind had played us. She’d woven her way into Mum’s trust so deeply that Mum rewrote her will without a word to us. We were left with nothing—no home, no hope, holding the pieces of a life we’d built for her.
I still can’t fathom it. How could Mum, whom I loved and cared for, do this? How did I miss Emily’s schemes? This bitter lesson stays with me: trust no stranger with your elderly parents. Watch. Question. Never let an outsider grow closer than family. Or you’ll end up like us—empty-handed, heartbroken, wondering how love could be so blind.