The flood alert was issued on the morning of 21 October 2023. Storm Babet was coming. Be prepared. Paul Gilbert, a 47-year-old landscape gardener from Chesterfield in Derbyshire, did what he always did when a flood alert came in: he went to check on his mum, Maureen. Maureen lived on Tapton Terrace, a narrow row of red‑brick terrace houses yards from the River Rother in Chesterfield. Everyone who lives on the terrace, as residents call it, knew Maureen: she was an institution. She had lived there all of her 83 years, first at number 19, her parents’ house, and then at number 21, the house she moved to when she married Gilbert’s dad in 1975. Because Maureen worked nights as a cleaner in a hotel and Gilbert’s dad worked early mornings on the railways, for many years Maureen slept downstairs on the sofa. She was a sturdy, trustworthy sort of person. “She would always keep mine and my brother’s secrets,” says Gilbert. “Never would tell my dad anything. Even when we used to skive off school and …