I Looked Through My Sister’s Letterbox & the Flat Was Completely Empty — We Found Out She’d Been Repossessed & Was Living on the Streets & She Never Told Us

Episode 41 | Amber Hughes — The Sister Left Behind: How Addiction & Homelessness Took Hannah, & What Amber Built in Her Name

Amber Hughes grew up in Oxfordshire with a 16-year age gap between her and her older sister Hannah — close enough that Hannah came to every sports day, every school fete, and said goodnight across town at eight o’clock every evening even after moving out. Their childhood was simple and happy. Then their dad died when Amber was 14, Hannah was 30, working full-time, paying a mortgage alone and just starting a weekend degree in early years education. The cracks, looking back, started there.

Years passed. Amber noticed Hannah asking their mum for money. Working the supermarket till on Friday nights, she watched Hannah avoid her checkout and buy four bottles of wine. Arguments followed. She thought it was selfishness. Addiction never crossed her mind.

Then she was sent round to Hannah’s flat and looked through the letterbox. Empty. The flat had been repossessed. Hannah hadn’t told anyone. Over the years that followed — a codependent relationship, lost jobs, missed mortgage payments, hiding it all to protect the family — Hannah’s drinking had quietly become something unrecognisable. Christmas 2015: a seizure, hospital, doctors telling them if she stopped drinking she could die and if she kept going she’d die. Hannah was 36.

The next 18 months were a chaos of hostels, disappearing, sleeping rough in Oxford parks, five-hour searches through the city streets, seizures from trying to stop cold. Eventually Hannah got a room at Homeless Oxfordshire’s O’Hanlon House. In May 2017 they had what Amber didn’t know was their last visit — looking through old photos on a bench in Oxford, arguing about shoes, Hannah saying she loved her, Amber rolling her eyes. Four days later the police knocked.

Hannah was 38. She died of cardiac arrest following a seizure, with no alcohol in her system — possibly trying to detox alone.

In Hannah’s name Amber started Amber Lights in Oxford, raising over £2,000 for Homeless Oxfordshire, taking Hannah’s story into primary schools, and campaigning against the Vagrancy Act that criminalised people for sleeping rough.

You can find Amber in Instagram at:

https://www.instagram.com/amberlightsinoxford

Amber's LinkTree:

https://linktr.ee/AmberLightsinOxford

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Support the show

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter

https://a.co/d/0854fIb6

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace

https://a.co/d/0gy6mT9Z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

https://a.co/d/0jdcIjGb

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter

https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace

https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

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