It was a Saturday morning and Faye Smith was enjoying breakfast with her two children. Just 30 minutes later, one of them was gone.
The sight of her daughter Gabi lying face down in six inches of water will haunt her for the rest of her life.
The 12-year-old had only gone for a bath. But a friend, who had slept over the night before, noticed she was taking an unusually long time.
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The pal alerted Faye whose blood immediately ran cold. “Gabi, I need you to answer me darling,” she shouted as she rattled the locked door handle. “If you don’t answer, I’m breaking the door down.”
The mum was met with silence. Within seconds, Faye had kicked the door in with such force it sent bolts flying into the air.
The unimaginable horrors that awaited her behind that piece of wood will forever be etched in her memory.
Gabi was lying six inches below the water line and she was unresponsive. Faye frantically called her name as she attempted to drag her out of the tub.
Once on the floor, Faye tried to resuscitate her daughter’s lifeless body while her older brother Zach, now 26, called paramedics.
“Their lack of haste told me everything,” Faye said. “At the hospital there was a team of around 10 medical staff who all worked on her.
“You stand there in the room watching and then, at an invisible signal, they all leave and it’s just you and the main doctor. He was the one who told me she’d gone, which I already knew. It was agony.”
The coroner ruled that Gabi had drowned during the incident on March 16, 2013. The young girl had suffered a seizure which doctors say was likely caused by the trauma of losing her father two years earlier.
Faye, 56, says the death had a huge impact on Gabi. She became withdrawn and anxious and hated being away from her mum, even if it meant just going to school.
Around a year later, she suffered a seizure. The family were driving home one night after dropping Zach off at a birthday party when the youngster suddenly shot back in her car seat and collapsed forward onto the dashboard. Her lips were blue and her eyes were rolling back.
Marketing consultant Faye, from Sheffield, took her to hospital and doctors believed Gabi may have been suffering from epilepsy.
But tests suggested it was something called non-epileptic attack disorder (NEAD), a rare condition likely triggered by the trauma of her dad’s death.
Non-epileptic attacks happen when the brain can't handle particular thoughts, memories, emotions or sensations, according to the NHS.
They can also sometimes relate to stress or a previous experience of trauma, i.e. something outside your control which feels too hard to bear.
Non-epileptic attacks look similar to epileptic seizures or fainting spells but they are not caused by abnormal electrical discharges or blood pressure. While there is no cure for NEAD, Gabi had therapy and she responded well. After a while, she returned to the bright and chatty person she always was.
She could talk about her dad without becoming depressed and was making friends again – even telling her family she wanted to grow up and become a children’s doctor so she could help other young people like her.
By the time that fatal Saturday morning came, family life was finally starting to look up. Zach was doing his GCSE’s and Gabi had not suffered another seizure, having been given the all-clear by a neurologist.
“So many times I’ve thought, what if? What if I’d stopped her having baths? What if I’d checked on her earlier? But she was almost 13. Doctors had said baths were okay,” Faye said.
“You can’t stop a child that age living her life because she once suffered one seizure.”
More tragedy came six years after Gabi’s death. Within the space of a few months, Faye’s engagement suddenly came to an end and her father passed away. The ordeals were the final straw for her mental health.
Determined not to take medication, she decided to join the S40s Ramblers, having found physical exercise improved her mood.
There was also support from Care For The Family, a British charity which helps families going through bereavements.
Faye went on to create Hope Walking, an organisation which provides walking journeys for women to give them the opportunity to reconnect with nature and the environment.
The pilgrimages across the Peak District will start with a special memorial walk in Gabi’s memory.
The walk, from Ashford in the Water to Bakewell and back round the Monsal Trail, was a favourite of Gabi’s and the last walk she ever did with her mum and brother just six days before she died.
It is being organised with the help of the S40s Ramblers Group, which Faye joined four years ago to help her recover from a relationship breakdown.
Gabi’s Memorial Walk is free and open to anyone. Donations on the day will go to the Ramblers Coast Path appeal. For details, visit www.s40wg.org/walks or the S40s Ramblers Facebook page.
Bereavement support for parents and those widowed young can be found from Care for the Family by clicking here.
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