Why Sharon sacrificed her retirement to be a mother to her grandchildren Sharon's addict daughter Sarah was - and still is - hooked on heroin So when Sarah gave birth to a daughter, Sharon decided to raise her Sarah fell pregnant a second time; Sharon hoped it would turn her around But Sarah, in and out of rehab, wasn't able to pull her life together So Sharon and her husband Philip took on the full-time parenting of their two granddaughters By Frances Hardy Normally, births are joyous, says Sharon Egan. 'You ring round and tell everyone: "It's a girl!" Bouquets arrive and you put announcements in the newspaper. 'But it wasn't like that for my two granddaughters.' Instead, they arrived into a world of chaos created by their mother: Sharon's daughter, Sarah. Nana love: Sharon with Emma and her little sister Charlotte, pictured in 2008 'You could feel the sadness in the labour ward,' says Sharon. When Emma was born, I thought: "Maybe this will turn Sarah around." But it didn't. 'Then Emma's sister Charlotte came along and the circumstances were just so horrible. The nurses were kind, but we all knew that after Sarah went through the labour, nothing would be as it should. She wouldn't be taking a baby home to love and care for.' Sharon, 51, knew her daughter could never fulfil her maternal obligations because she was - and, indeed, still is - hooked on heroin. Though Sharon hoped that the arrival of Emma, now 12, might save her daughter from the grip of her addiction, that prospect quickly receded. And by the time Charlotte, now six, was born, Sarah had squandered so many chances to kick her habit that Sharon and her husband, Philip, 63, were forced to make a remarkable and self- sacrificing decision - to take on the full-time parenting of their two granddaughters. Sharon - strong, feisty and independent - sits in the living room of her immaculate detached house in North Yorkshire, with its comfy sofas and pine table, where every evening her grandchildren have a home-cooked dinner. She is not sentimental, but often cries as she struggles to convey the trauma of her 'bright and beautiful' daughter's descent from this comfortable, loving, middle-class upbringing to a hell of drug dens, criminality and dependence. 'At the age of just 13, Sarah started truanting, stealing, lying constantly and staying out all night,' says Sharon. We tried to protect her, but in the end we lost control. My life was consumed by panic, fear and an over-riding feeling of guilt. I asked myself: "What have I done wrong?" We never said Sarah had to leave. But at 16 she took it upon herself to go. She ended up in London: shoplifting, fleecing people and prostituting herself to feed her habit. I felt sick every time the doorbell went or the phone rang. It was into this dark, depraved world that Emma was born when Sarah was 20. Sarah, now 33, was not in a relationship; indeed, she is not certain who her daughter's father is. At the time, Sharon and Philip - then managing director of his own thermal insulation company - mistakenly believed their days of full-time parenting were soon to be behind them. Their son, Thomas, now 28 and a mechanical engineer, was preparing to go to university - where he gained a distinction in his master's degree - and they were anticipating a gentle slide into retirement. But faced with the prospect of their granddaughter being taken into care by social services, Sharon knew what she had to do. Philip needed no persuading, and so the couple took on the all-consuming task of raising their baby granddaughter - becoming Emma's legal guardians when she was three years old, and Charlotte's when she was born, three years after that. Sacrifice: Sharon relinquished her well-paid job and took a part-time post to fit around her new childcare responsibilities Sharon relinquished her well-paid job as area manager for a cleaning company and took a part-time post to fit around her new childcare responsibilities. Philip, who had hoped, by now, to be applying the brakes to his fast-paced career, is instead still working flat out to provide for his granddaughters. Today, Sharon says: 'Sometimes I see friends who are semi-retired, going out for mid-week meals and having holidays abroad and I think: "That's what I should be doing at my time of life; not watching Hannah Montana, washing school uniforms and mediating the girls' squabbles." I used to love my Sunday morning lie-in: breakfast in bed and reading the papers. Now I don't even have a bath in peace. Charlotte will come in, plonk herself down and say: "What shall we talk about now, Nana?" 'But I'm so proud of them. They know how to behave and they make me laugh. And when I say "Who loves you most in the whole wide world?" they both chorus: "Nana!"  These wonderful moments are tinged with sadness - for they recall the days when Sarah was equally happy and innocent, before she succumbed to addiction. Sharon remembers the beginning of her daughter's spiral into the squalor of addiction. It began when Sharon found Sarah, then just 13, unconscious in her bedroom one Saturday afternoon - and discovered she had been inhaling aerosols. 'It was a complete shock,' she says. We took her to hospital. There were stern words about the dangers of what she'd done and she was grounded for a month. Naively, we assumed we'd nipped it in the bud. Then, two years later, we found a wrap of powder hidden in her clothes. I knew instinctively it was drugs. She'd got it from the older brother of a child she was baby-sitting. She was 15. She thought she was in love with him. Believing tough love was the only way to protect her daughter, Sharon had no compunction about contacting the police. 'But I felt so embarrassed; that I had failed as a mother,' she says. 'Friends' children were achieving at school, pursuing normal activities: why was mine going off the rails?' A court case ensued - she can't recall the outcome; there have been so many court appearances that they have become a blur - but in any event, it failed to steer Sarah off her path to addiction. 'The police were always on our doorstep when Sarah was caught shoplifting,' says Sharon. 'Sometimes I see friends who are semi-retired, going out for mid-week meals and having holidays abroad and I think: "That's what I should be doing at my time of life; not watching Hannah Montana, washing school uniforms and mediating the girls' squabbles."' 'They'd often say: "We weren't expecting to come to a decent home like this." ' While Thomas excelled at school, Sarah truanted. 'And she stole from us - jewellery, money - so eventually we put locks on the bedroom doors,' says Sharon. They moved house, too, from a market town near York to a North Yorkshire village, when Sarah was 14, desperately hoping to remove her from the malign influences around her. But when she was 16, Sarah ran away. 'She finally rang me from an unsavoury hostel,' says Sharon. 'I'd constantly check on her and take her bags of groceries. But she wouldn't come home and she was too old to be forced.' Sarah's life was quickly unravelling. She decamped to London and was sucked into an underworld of heroin addicts, dealers, pimps, prostitution and theft. Occasionally, when she reached a low point, she would return home. 'She'd say she wanted to "rattle" (withdraw from heroin), but she'd stay for a day or two then do a runner,' says Sharon. It was as if she was putting a knife in my heart and turning it, but I never relinquished hope. 'I kept thinking of the adorable, pretty, clever little girl she'd been and what a waste it was of her intelligence; what a waste of a life.' Sharon is stoic, tough, resourceful: she has had to be. But several times as she tells her story she weeps, blots her eyes and talks on doggedly through tears. When Sarah was 19, a social worker in London phoned Sharon with the news her daughter was pregnant. And, at seven months, Sarah came home to her mum. 'I met her off the train at midnight,' says Sharon. She was heavily pregnant. She looked so lost. I cried and hugged her. I suppose I thought: "We can start afresh and everything will be all right."  And for a few tantalising months it seemed it might be. Sarah, who had, it seems, been taking heroin throughout her pregnancy, went on a methadone programme to help her stop. Emma was born in August 2001. 'I fell in love with her immediately,' says Sharon. 'She hadn't got much hair, she was underweight and had to go into special care because she was also "rattling." As I cuddled her I thought: "I must protect her."  Sharon had arranged local accommodation for her daughter and granddaughter, but - while her baby was still in hospital - Sarah fled back to London. 'I was devastated,' says Sharon. 'I went to the flat I'd found for her, saw all the baby stuff there - the crib and pram I'd bought - and it just broke my heart.' 'I fell in love with [Emma] immediately': Sharon with Emma and husband Philip on holiday in Cyprus in 2005 Sharon knew straight away she wanted to look after Emma. After the baby was placed in temporary foster care while social service protocols were observed, she began her return journey back to motherhood. The alternative - Emma being shunted between foster carers, perhaps with adoption by another family at the end of it - was simply unthinkable. To begin with, however, she almost cracked under the pressure: 'Emma was in a nursery and I was dropping her off early in the morning and working full-time. 'You don't know quite which camp you're in. You're not a nana who's just helping mum out, but you're not a mum either, with the support network you had when your own children were younger. 'At the time I felt Philip wasn't supporting me emotionally and for a while it caused a rift between us. My elderly mum, now 74, has had a stroke and needs care. She can't walk, let alone babysit. So I felt very alone. When Sharon swapped full-time work for a part-time position, however, life became more manageable and she and Philip patched up their differences. Sarah, meanwhile, visited erratically. She came off drugs and for a short time she took Emma back. But she reverted to her heroin habit. Emma returned to live with her grandparents and they became her legal guardians. Three years later, word reached Sharon via a social worker that Sarah was pregnant again, this time by a regular boyfriend. Sharon was furious at her daughter's flagrant lack of responsibility. The new baby would never live with her. She would be put on the at risk register, then she'd have to be put up for adoption,' she says. I was so angry. I kept thinking of the adorable, pretty, clever little girl she'd been and what a waste it was of her intelligence; what a waste of a life.' But when her wrath subsided, she and Philip asked themselves a difficult question: could they take on another child? 'The bottom line was that this baby would be Emma's sister,' says Sharon. 'So we made the decision we'd take care of her.' When Charlotte was born in March 2007, she had to be placed in temporary foster care for four months while Sharon and Philip underwent the cumbersome legal processes that enabled them to become her official guardians. Today, the girls attend local Catholic schools and are thriving. When I visit, Charlotte - chatty and sweet-natured - wants to show me her bedroom; a cuddly Eeyore snuggles in the corner of her cabin bed. Barbie dolls cover the floor. Emma, meanwhile, on the cusp of her teens, is robust, sporty and self-sufficient. She enjoys taking the family's labrador, Jasmine, for walks. Of course, Sharon concedes, she is always fearful history could repeat itself and that her beloved grandchildren could follow their mother's path. But this seems reassuringly unlikely. Emma, like her Uncle Tom, wants to go to university. She is also, says Sharon, more aware than her little sister of the destructive route her mother has taken. Indeed, she recounts a heart-breaking story to illustrate the impact of Sarah's unreliability on her elder daughter. Sarah was in prison - as she has been several times - for shoplifting, and she phoned. Usually I manage to intercept her calls, but this time Emma got there first. Sarah promised her that on the day she was released, she'd take her out for a treat. When the day arrived, Emma was ready at 6am with a pretty dress on and her hair done. She said: "Mummy's coming today, so I want to look nice." And all day she paced up and down to the bus stop, but Sarah never turned up. It was devastating. Emma was forgiving. She said: "It wasn't Mummy's fault." ' But Sharon does not make excuses for her daughter: 'I told her Mummy had made a choice and that had consequences.' It is a stark lesson for a child to learn, but Emma and Charlotte have the solace of knowing - whatever route their mother followed - their Nana chose to raise them and loves them unconditionally. Sarah lives a few miles away and has begun a methadone recovery programme. When contacted by the Mail, she said: 'I'm so grateful for everything my mum has done - for me and my daughters.' But she still drifts in and out of their lives, remembering and forgetting them at will. Sharon's love, however, remains constant. 'I've transferred my love to the girls,' she says. 'I've stopped feeling guilty about Sarah. My allegiances have shifted. 'The girls are my life and even though I sometimes long for a moment's peace - that lie-in; an uninterrupted bath - I miss them so much when they're not around. I could not bear the thought of anyone else raising them. My life is devoted to them. Some names have been changed. Read Sharon's blog: Life, Love, Laundry at sha-lifelovelaundry.blogspot.co.uk