I started my first senior job in 1988, just before another girl, C, and we worked together for four years, getting promoted at about the same time. But that was where the similarities ended.

Where I was good at my job, C was outstanding. She had a clear idea of where she wanted to go and what courses she needed to get there, and committed herself to her work. Meantime, I meandered along, ending up where I needed to be by chance, work always coming second to my social life. Where I was a bundle of all-too-stroppy energy, C was a cloud of calm. C's life outside work was effortlessly perfect too. In contrast to my chaotic life and succession of inadequate/uninterested gothy-mess boyfriends, C was happily settled with her handsome successful boyfriend, whom she married shortly after we went our separate work ways - and she's still married to him.

If I ever saw her hungover I wasn't aware of it. She didn't need alcohol to escape or to cope, despite having been brought up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles (something she downplayed). Where I was a straggly bunch of rags, she was elegance personified. Where I couldn't make small talk to save my life, she could chat to anyone. Life seemed to come easy to C - no, not that quite (because she didn't have things handed to her on a plate, she worked for them)- rather C seemed to effortlessly surf the wave of life whilst I doggypaddled along as best as I could trying not to drown.

Then I hear it from a mutual friend, and it's all over. C's 12 year-old girl has died. Not in an accident, but as a result of a chest infection. The hospital staff tried to resuscitate her, and succeeded at least twice, but then she died. They can't even have the body yet because there has to be an autopsy.

I can imagine C as the perfect mother I could never be, her children are so lucky to have her. But what now? How can a person get over something like that? In her emails (I mailed my condolences, for all the use it can do) I already see her self-blame. Like me, she's got some medical training so she didn't rush to the doctor - and after all, everyone thinks their children are out of danger when they are 12 - they don't panic like they do when the children are babies. You think they're safe, and then they are gone.

It makes my whinges sound selfish, my problems immaterial. I can honestly say I'd go through all the Steve crap from now until the end of time if I could give C her daughter back, because that's how little my problems are when measured up against the life of a child I never met but who had her mother's eyes and expression. I know that no-one deserves to lose a child, but especially not C, and especially not like that.

I feel so ashamed of myself for getting my life so out of proportion. I still have Small Child, and that is all that matters. I'm the one with the perfect life now.