Sheila Smith's son Mark died in a boating accident, and his best friend, who was at the wheel at the time, was jailed for manslaughter. A year after the tragedy, Sheila tells Women's Editor Christen Pears why she is visiting her son's killer.

TODAY, Sheila Smith is spending the first anniversary of her son's death with family and friends. Tomorrow, she will visit Sean Robinson, the man responsible for the accident, in jail. But she feels no anger or bitterness towards the 35-year -old. Remarkably, she sees his imprisonment as a second tragedy.

"People think I should be glad Sean's locked up, but what good does that do? It was an accident. Sean and Mark were best friends. The last thing Sean would have wanted was to hurt Mark. I want him out of there.

"He's only allowed visitors once every two weeks so this will be the first time I've seen him since he went to prison in June. We write a lot and talk on the phone and he says he's fine but I won't really know until I see him. I think, in a way, it's harder for him than for me. I've got people around me all the time but he's got no-one."

Sheila has just returned home from a week's holiday in Greece, but although she looks tanned, I can still see the stress etched into her face. Barefoot, she sits in an armchair, smoking cigarettes and behind her, the doors are open onto the patio and the garden, which slopes down the hill towards the river Tyne in the distance.

"I had to get away for a bit, just to try and sort things out. It's a year since Mark died but sometimes, I don't know if I'll ever accept it. At first, I used to pretend to myself that he was on holiday and then that he had gone away to work and there are still times when I block it out completely. There are other times when I know he's never coming back and I just cry for ages."

Sheila and her husband separated 14 years ago and, Mark, who was 29, still lived with her at their home in Gateshead. There is a picture of him and his sister, Kerrie, as children, on the wall and another, more recent photograph taken when he was on holiday in Canada.

Mark had been friends with Sean for 15 years. On the evening of the accident, the two men and another friend, Malcolm Harper, went for a meal on the Quayside in Newcastle. They travelled from Sean's home in St Peter's Basin in an inflatable dinghy. They had all had a few drinks and Sean admitted to having a pint of lager and several glasses of red wine but, according to Sheila, it wasn't a heavy drinking session.

"If they wanted to do that, they used to go up into town and they'd get a taxi. They were always careful about drinking and driving," she says. "At the time, there were reports in the papers that they'd been involved in a fight, they'd stolen the boat, were fleeing from the police and had been taking drugs. None of that was true and it was very, very hurtful."

On the way back, Sean, who was driving, turned round to talk to Mark and, in that split second, the boat crashed into another carrying a group of sea cadets on exercise.

The force of the impact threw Malcolm into the other boat and Mark was catapulted into the water. Sean received a blow to the head and was concussed but circled around in the dinghy, looking for his friend.

"I don't know a lot about what happened after the impact but I want to know why it took so long to get him out of the water. I understand it's not the policy for sea cadets or their instructors to go into the water but surely someone could have done more to save him," Sheila says.

Sheila was staying in Whitby with her sister and brother-in-law when she heard about the accident. A policeman knocked at the door of the caravan at four o'clock in the morning to tell her there had been an 'incident' involving Mark.

"It didn't sink in at first. It had only been a few hours since I'd seen him. He was buying a house so he had taken the week off work and when I decided to go to Whitby, he said he would take me. He was going to stay himself but it started raining so he decided to go back. I'd just bought a new patio set and he was half way through putting it up so the last thing I said to him was to make sure he finished it by the time I got back."

As Sheila sat in the car on the way back to Newcastle, she had no idea whether her son was alive. She says the journey seemed to last an eternity and all she can remember is willing him to be alive. When she arrived at the police station, the officers were unable to tell her any more about the accident but they did tell her Sean was in hospital.

"The police advised me not to go and see him but I had to. When I went in, he was lying in bed with this huge cut on his head and on his legs. He said he'd been dreading seeing me because he thought I'd be angry but I wasn't. I just put my arms around him and he cried."

It was nine days before Mark's body was finally recovered. "I knew he was dead by then but I was hoping that somehow he would be all right. It was horrendous but Sean was such an amazing support.

"After he came out of hospital, he came to my house on his crutches, sat down and just told me everything about the accident and then he was there for me all the time, so it was a real shock when I realised he was going to be charged."

Sean accepted responsibility for what happened immediately, and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Sheila wanted to be a witness at his trial but he refused, telling her she had been through enough already. He was jailed for four years in June.

"Sean knew he was going to prison all along. He kept saying, 'I've got to pay for my friend' but none of us expected it to be four years. It's ridiculous and he just doesn't deserve it," Sheila says vehemently.

She doesn't see the sense in him being sent to jail and says the authorities should concentrate instead on improving safety on the river. She has written to her MP and the Marine Accident Investigation Branch, asking them to look at possible improvements, including more signs about speed limits and direction of travel.

"We have to learn from what happened. If they had wanted to punish Sean, they should have given him community service so he could go and talk to people about what happened. Sending him to prison doesn't help anyone." She is hoping Sean will be given leave to appeal against his sentence but she knows it will be a lengthy process. In the meantime, she remains in close contact with his family, including his partner, Lynn, and their three-year-old daughter, Amy.

"I've been friendly with them all for years and I know it's just as hard for them as it is for me. I don't know how long it's going to take, it could be a couple of years but I hope we're going to get Sean out. No-one is to blame for what happened that night. It was a tragic accident."