From the day she was born, people said Billie was beautiful. Edward, her twin, was a bonny boy, but it was Billie that everybody wanted to pick up and cuddle, Billie whose face they wanted to stroke.

When the twins were just a few weeks old one of my neighbours, Perry Beckett, stopped me in the street.

Perry was a tough lad. He kept iguanas in a glass tank in his living room, worked double shifts at the Selby coal mines and played rugby in the front row for the Miners' Welfare.

'When am I going to see them babies?' he shouted across the street at me.

'Now, if you want,' I replied. 'Right, then,' he said. 'Get the kettle on. I'm just going to get these work clothes off.'

Perry came to our living room and reached into the crib. He put his huge hands around Billie and lifted her out as if he were holding a bird's egg. Then he started to weep.

More than that: he sobbed. 'Here, tha'll have to hold her a minute,' he said. 'She's too precious for me and I'm too soft.'

This was a man well used to crash-tackling 18st prop forwards and sticking his elbow in someone's face on a whim. 'By hell, she's lovely!'

Nine short years later, our Billie would be dead, drowned in a senseless canoeing accident that has left not only our small family, but our entire close-knit Yorkshire community, shattered.

We buried our Billie at noon one blustery spring morning in May 2006. The first swallow to come back home flew over our heads as we lowered her wickerwork coffin into the sandstone earth of the old cemetery.

Some teachers from the local high school lined up by the cemetery wall to pay their respects. St Wilfrid's was the school that Billie had been longing to go to because, she said, they had vegetarian options for lunch and she could learn to speak Russian or Japanese there.

Losing Billie is not just our loss: Billie is lost to the world. She would have been somebody: a musician, perhaps - certainly she was a gifted violinist - or maybe a poet; without doubt a humanitarian. She would have flown.

Our Billie was a beautiful and talented child. But, much more than that, she was once a living and breathing real person, someone's daughter, a grand little boy's twin sister.

She was at the centre of a happy family, a funny, quirky, loving little lass with a lot to live for.

Billie's is the story of a brief life, lived to the full.

It's seven in the morning and the house is full of activity, all of us scurrying about, packing bags and cutting sandwiches ready for a few days away in Hay-on-Wye, in Herefordshire.

Edward wants his favourite packed lunch, egg and tomato, chopped together with salt and pepper. Their mother, Heather, fills a flask with tea.

Billie can't decide whether to take just her teddy Anastasia or Anastasia and Oliver, a doll that looks like a real baby.

Our next-door neighbour drops us off at the railway station in Wakefield. We'll travel from here to Sheffield, to Birmingham, then Hereford, and take a taxi from the station there to a little hotel in Hay.

I picked this one from the internet because it has its own pool, and the kids love swimming.

I've written out an itinerary of train times and connections. Edward asks if he can save it in his pocket.

'Yes, you can, but don't lose it, whatever you do!' I say. But by the time we change platforms at Sheffield he has already lost the piece of paper and I have got myself completely stressed.

'Do you know, Edward? You're bloody useless!' I snap at him. He glares back.

I walk off fast towards the Birmingham train. Edward stays on the platform, defiant.

Billie starts to cry, frightened that Edward will be left behind. I throw our bags on to the luggage rack, step back off the train, pick Edward up a bit roughly and plonk him on a seat. He carries on glaring and pretends to ignore me by looking out of the window.

Heather says: 'Come on now, everybody, it's only a bit of paper.'

'Only a bit of paper! We might not get back without it,' I exaggerate, for effect.

Billie reaches out to hold my hand and Edward's. She says: 'You're not bloody useless, Edward, really!'

It makes us all laugh, even Edward. I look him in the eye.

He eyes me back. 'Mates?' I say. 'Mates,' he says. 'Can we get the travel chess out?'

A day later and we're already having a great time.

'Can we go swimming after breakfast, Mam?' says Billie. We tried out the pool the night before, when our Billie put me to shame in an impromptu backstroke race.

Before Heather can answer, I tell the kids that it's not a good idea to go swimming straight after our breakfast. 'You'll sink!' I say. I'm outvoted, of course.

Back in the hotel room, Billie lies on the bed next to me and puts her arm around me. 'You're my lovely Daddy, aren't you?' she says.

'I am, darling. And you're my lovely daughter, my cup and saucer,' I reply.

Heather has longed to come to Hay-on-Wye for years because of its bookshops, and she's in her element as we browse around later that morning. 'Imagine,' she keeps saying. 'A town with nearly 40 bookshops.'

After we've been to seven or eight, however, Edward and Billie are getting bored. They decide to play games outside.

I start worrying because the streets are narrow and I can see them through the shop window stepping on and off the road. I mention this to Heather.

She's torn between wanting to do something with the kids and 'just having another ten minutes in this poetry section'. We decide to find the tourist information office and make a list of other things to do.

On the way there, Heather tells me that Billie was a bit funny this morning at the swimming pool.

'A bit distant,' she says, when I ask her what she means. 'When we were getting dry after the swimming she started reminiscing about being a little girl,' explains Heather. Billie had talked about how nicely we had always dressed her.

At the tourist information office I ask the lady behind the counter about canoeing trips for families. She points to a whole rack of brochures.

I pick the first that my hand falls on, Hay Canoes, which shows a picture of families having fun on the river. Edward is already pestering to have a go.