Her husband, Roger, a Swansea Valley councillor, was away on business and there was no need to rush.

But when Paulette finally arrived back at her house in Heol-y-Ffin, Trebanos, about 5.30 pm on that fateful April day in 1999, her life changed forever.  A police office was waiting outside with the news that her apparently healthy 24-year-old son, Christiaan had been found dead.

“He was tall, good-looking and full of energy,” says Paulette, pointing to framed photographs of a smiling athletic-looking young man dotted around her L-shaped living-room.  “He had just moved to Worcester in his job and was enjoying life to the full.  He walked a lot, loved dancing and always seemed perfectly fit.”

But a post mortem test showed the former Gorseinon College student had died of a hidden heart disorder, myocarditis – the same illness that killed 15-year-old Daniel Yorath, son of former Wales and Swansea City manager, Terry Yorath in 1992 – which could have been picked up by a medical check.

Paulette was told that this condition was one of the causes of sudden cardiac death in four to eight young adults in the UK every week.  It was the fist time she’d heard of Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS), also known as adult cot death because its victims often die quietly in their sleep.

To help cope with her shock and grief, Paulette joined the charity CRY – Cardiac Risk in the Young – and is now in the forefront of the organisation’s campaign for the young to have compulsory cardiac screening.  She has met Assembly Health Minister Jane Hutt in a bid to get all Welsh teenagers checked for hidden heart disease.

“She was sympathetic to my case,” reports Paulette.  “Hopefully the Assembly will agree to screening to pick up any problems before it is too late.  We have to safeguard our children.  They are our future.  My son might still be here if his condition had been spotted in time.  Although the illness is incurable, it can be controlled with drugs, regular check-ups and, in some cases, remedial surgery.”

The weekend before his death, Christiaan came home to visit his parents and complained of flu-like symptoms.  “He was feeling a little under the weather but that was all,” remembers Paulette.  “He went to bed then got up again.  We put it down to tiredness.  Anyway he seemed to recover.  He returned to Worcester and went back to work.”

Christiaan spoke to his mother on the Wednesday and worked as normal on Thursday.  When he didn’t turn up on Friday morning some of the girls were concerned and went to his home to see if he was OK.  Looking through the window, they saw he was slumped at the bottom of the stairs and they called the emergency services.

“I’ll never forget that day,” says Paulette, who is the local representative and bereavement counsellor for CRY.  “It was absolutely harrowing.  I had to contact Roger and tell him the news.  He was driving back from a conference in Stockport and intended stopping to visit Christiaan on the way home.

“Our lives were changed irrevocably.  You never get over the sudden loss of your child.  There are so many emotions but you learn to develop a public face and a private one.

“My concern now is to get something done to protect other kids from dying of undetected heart conditions.  I’ll do anything to prevent even a few parents going through what we have suffered.”