Our daughter Jessica died in 1995 at age 7. We had Christopher a couple of years later, then had 3 mid-trimester miscarriages, all girls, followed by a hysterectomy. Jessica had been a delight and we both loved having a girl. And while Chris was a beautiful boy with a sunny character, both of us longed for another girl, two children at the same time, not serially.

When the Ying family moved next door, they came with their matched set: Sammy and Josh. Sammy a year younger than Chris and Josh a couple of years younger again. Josh was the prodigious Maths student, years ahead of his class, with the music gene that often goes with that. Sammy was also very smart - topped all her classes, dux of the school. But she was the all rounder. Musical as well, percussion and guitar. Had she wanted to be one dimensional, she may have trained for hours a day and become an olympic class swimmer, or a gymnast. But her life was too much in balance for that, as she also had a special spark of empathy and personality. Seeing her was always a joy.

I can't remember when she started calling us "second dad" and "second mum", but it was well after I felt like she was as close to us as any of our nieces. So it was very easy to respond to her as "second daughter", because she is that important. Not a replacement for Jessica, but almost as loved. So this was not a very hard poem to write.