‘I didn't expect my life to get like this': Living in Didsbury, suffering from cancer, waiting for the bailiffs to come

Living with cancer and days away from homelessness, Emma is trapped in a crisis. She moved to Manchester, looking for a new beginning near to where her long-distance partner was living.

Emma settled into a £1,300-a-month ground-floor apartment with her cats, Luna and Sunny, in one of the city’s most sought-after locations. Yet now she is counting down the days until bailiffs will arrive at her front door - and says the council has effectively told her to sit tight until they arrive.

“It’s all a bit like a Channel Five documentary,” Emma, 50, told the Manchester Evening News. “I didn’t expect my life to get like this.”

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After working in finance for around a decade, in compliance and anti-money laundering departments at Canary Wharf, Emma had grown tired of life in the capital. She wanted to set up her own home organisation business and relocate to Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, where a friend was living.

Her plans were turned upside down in December 2019 when she was hit by a motorbike which jumped a traffic light, leaving her unable to work as she recovered from her injuries. Months later, the country was locked down. Emma spent much of the pandemic living with her mum.

She moved to another place in East Dulwich, south-east London, which turned out to be an illegal sublet - leaving Emma with an ongoing battle to recover her possessions after the locks were changed. Emma headed north to Manchester in November 2021, moving into the Didsbury flat she still calls home.

But her health soon began to deteriorate, the relationship ended three months after Emma moved to Manchester, and her plans to start a new career in the city crumbled.