Dear Mr Smith,

By the time you reach the third or fourth paragraph of this letter you will either have thrown it away - because its content disturbs you - or have decided that, difficult though the subject is, it must be read.

Though this letter comes from a perfect stranger it is from someone probably not unlike yourself. I am what is referred to as a 'family man'. Middle class. Middle of the road. A senior executive with a pretty wife, an adorable family...everything, in fact, that many of us take for granted.

Between October 2005 and March 2007 my world changed in a way which is difficult to describe.

There are few outward signs of this change. Life follows a steady pattern and the lawn still gets cut at the weekend. But the lives, values and priorities of my family are not as they were.

On March 16th 2007 at the unthinkable, almost preposterous age of ten, my daughter Lilly died of an incurable childhood illness after an exhausting struggle during which her determined little body battled against ludicrous odds.

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