‘They took everything’: arson attack destroyed a mother’s memories of her dead son

Karen Holmes lost a son to cancer, then her home in Yorkshire to a fire; the house is now refurbished but its meaning has gone

Karen Holmes is sitting in her newly renovated lounge in a house she has lived in for 28 years, but she cannot live here now. She cannot leave, either.

The house looks good. Better than good, people tell her. There are new walls, new floors, new windows. French doors where there used to be a window.