Life Sentence - 1
Life Sentence was a very difficult book to write since it drew on painful personal experiences, shared, I should imagine, by all too many men and women in their middle years: how do you manage to work and look after aged relatives miles away from where you live?
For years my sister and I commuted to Devon from Sheffield and Birmingham respectively to provide as best we could the care that Social Services couldn't offer. Eventually, when my mother was widowed and moved into a care home, my sister heroically surrendered her perfectly happy existence in the North and moved down to keep an eye on things. She has made a much better fist of settling down than my protagonist Fran Harman would ever have done, but such sacrifices should never be underestimated.
