Amid the grieving Greek families visiting the graves of loved ones yesterday, Sharon Wood was driven through the wrought-iron gates of Corfu cemetery. Inside a small chapel lay the two bodies of her young children, Christianne, 7, and Robert, 6.

Wood, 35, dressed in black trousers and clutching a white handkerchief, had last seen her children when they left for a half-term holiday on the Greek island on Monday. Yesterday she faced the heart-rending formality of identifying their bodies.

She was officially informed that they died after being overcome with carbon-monoxide fumes in a bungalow at the four-star Louis Corcyra Beach Resort at Gouvia, a resort on the north eastern shore of the Ionian island.

Both children were in their pyjamas and Christianne had been clutching a doll, according to the pathologist. In anticipation of their return to her home in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, their mother had redecorated their bedrooms as a surprise.

Instead, Wood found herself inspecting the scene of their deaths in a yellow bungalow. The children’s pink and blue rucksacks were carried out as she stood with her new husband, Peter.

After two days of lurid explanations of how Christianne and Robert had met their deaths, including poisonous mushrooms and a suicide pact, the reality turned out to be more prosaic. The two children, their father Neil Shepherd, 38, and his girlfriend Ruth Beatson, 27, had slipped into comas as deadly carbon monoxide seeped into their room. The source is believed to be a faulty boiler.

It emerged yesterday that Shepherd may have been comforting his daughter on a bed. They would have initially felt nauseous and suffered from a severe headache before sinking into a coma.

In another bed, Beatson was lying with Robert, who according to guests had been feeling ill the day before. Medical experts said that even if the adults had realised they were being gassed, their semi-comatose state would have made it virtually impossible to act.

Shepherd and Beatson survived after they were found unconscious by a maid at midday on Thursday. They were both conscious yesterday, but are barely able to speak and have not yet been told the two children are dead. The tragedy is even more appalling as it became clear last night that their deaths could have been avoided.

KATHY and Andrew Pallant, the previous occupants of B112, the yellow one-storey bungalow where Christianne and Robert lost their lives, woke up shortly before 8am last Sunday feeling desperately ill.

“I got out of bed and my legs just went from underneath me,” Kathy said. “I said to Andrew, ‘I want to go to the toilet and I can’t stand up’.

“He went to get out of bed and exactly the same thing happened to him. He got out of bed and was sick. I tried to struggle to get up and I just went backwards and knocked myself out.”

Andrew managed to crawl to the phone and blindly started hitting numbers in a desperate bid for help. Seata Clarke, 62, from Northampton, staying in another room in the hotel, picked up his call.

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