There’s a photo that takes pride of place on my friend Karen Capel’s mantlepiece. It’s of her son, Christopher, aged four, with his blond hair and adorable grin. It’s how Karen likes to remember him because just months after it was taken, her whole world was shattered.
I met Karen, 53, at a charity fun-day she and her husband, Kevin, 56, were holding at our local golf club in Frimley, Surrey, in May 2011. Karen was manning the raffle and she told me all about her son.
‘He was always smiling, the kind of smile that would light up a room,’ she said. I learned he was her and Kevin’s only child, who loved running around, climbing and splashing in the sea.
But in August 2006, Christopher, then four, started…