I met my fiancé, Richard, when my daughter, Natalie, was just four years old.

At the time, I had long stopped believing in second chances. Her father, my late husband, Alex, died from a sudden heart attack when Natalie was just one.

One moment he was playing peekaboo on the living room floor, and the next, I was alone in a world that didn’t know what to do with young widows and fatherless babies.

For a long time, I stopped thinking about things like love or partnership. Natalie was my entire world. I held her tighter at night than I held my grief. She was the reason I got out of bed, the reason I smiled when I didn’t feel like smiling.