LUCY and Nick Godding have been forced to face the fact they will never know how their daughter died while they were on holiday in Portugal.

Doctors have said they can’t establish what killed two-year-old Chloe while she slept in a villa apartment.

A Winchester inquest heard how Chloe’s family, who live in Chandler's Ford, did everything they could to resuscitate the youngster after she was found unconscious in her bed in May this year.

Lucy desperately tried to save her daughter, using her skills as a trained nurse to perform CPR and resuscitate her until paramedics arrived.

But when an ambulance arrived the paramedics didn’t know what to do and it took an hour to get her to a hospital in Albufeira, where Lucy and Nick were told Chloe was dead.

The end to their day was a stark difference to how it had started, with Chloe busying around on the beach, playing with her four-year-old brother, paddling in the swimming pool and laughing.

The inquest heard how she had been out all day and Lucy's statement said she was her "normal happy and smiling self."

Later in the day Chloe and her brother came back from a swim in the villa pool and after up the stairs to their apartment without shoes, Chloe slipped on the marble floor and Nick and grandmother Christine Watson saw her fall forwards but could not tell if she had hurt anything.

Lucy checked her over but couldn't find any evidence that she could have hit her head so gave her daughter a cuddle and kiss then took her in to help run a bath and said Chloe "returned to her normal self" before going to bed at around 7pm.

A few hours later, just after 10.30pm, Lucy went to check on her children and kiss them goodnight "as she always does before she goes to bed" and found Chloe unconscious.

Lucy immediately started trying to resuscitate her daughter and when it didn’t work she ran out onto the street screaming for help, finding an English doctor who raced to their aid.

In the rush to try and save Chloe, her dad Nick went to all the villa apartments trying to find someone who could speak Portuguese to call for an ambulance.

When the paramedics arrived they ordered Lucy to get a defibrillator ready and after failed attempts to resuscitate Chloe they went to hospital.

Lucy and Nick followed the ambulance in a taxi and had to wait an hour with no news about their daughter once they arrived, only to be faced with two doctors who struggled to speak English telling them Chloe had died in the early hours of the morning.

Since her death Chloe's family have had to wait seven months to find out how she died, with a post mortem in Portugal and another in England.

The Portuguese results by pathologist Dr de Silva Roubaco suggested that Chloe died of a "severe head injury" after they found bruising on the back of her head.

But consultant paediatric pathologist Dr Samantha Holden from Southampton said she did not find sufficient evidence of this and "was not convinced" because if Chloe had hit her head it would have been the front of the brain which would have been bruised.

The family were on holiday in Portugal at the time She told the coroner that she had found a small chest infection but not enough to kill Chloe and that she believed the cause of death was unascertained.

Senior Hampshire coroner Grahame Short gave an open conclusion and said: "I can't think of anything worse than a death of this kind in the family. I give you my sympathy, no words I can express can console you but I hope this has answered some questions."

Hampshire Chronicle:

In a statement, the family told the Chronicle: "Chloe will always be our beautiful daughter, she was always smiling and a lover of life. We are obviously devastated that Chloe is no longer here with us and miss her every minute of every day.

"In such a heartbreaking and life changing tragedy, we try to take comfort in the fact that every day of Chloe's life was a happy one for her, she woke up every single day smiling and went to bed each night happy.

"She never had any worries in the world and was totally adored by her whole family. If love could have saved Chloe she would have lived forever.

"We would all like to say a huge thank you for all the support shown by friends and family as well as the local community as we deal with Chloe's death. We would appreciate some time now as a family to absorb the results of the inquest in private."

By Emily Ford