I remember Deborah’s eyes most of all: still bright, still searching for her children even when her body was exhausted beyond repair. She was only 40, but she had already fought harder than most people do in a lifetime. For five and a half years, she lived between hospital corridors and home, between hope and brutal scans, between being a patient and being “Mum” to Hugo and Eloise.

In those final hours, as I held her hand, the room felt unbearably small, heavy with unspoken goodbyes. There was grief, but also a quiet, aching relief that her pain was finally ending. I whispered that I loved her, that I would look after the children, that she could rest. Losing a child at any age is unnatural, but loving her through to the very end was the last, fiercest act of motherhood I had left to give.