Ambulance crews took twice as long as they should have to reach a pregnant woman who collapsed and died at a coffee morning.
Amy Wilson was expecting her third child when she was taken ill at the event in Laurencekirk.
But last night her mother Rita she believed the delay in paramedics getting to her would probably not have made any difference to her chances of surviving.
And Rita Wilson said she feared she may never find out what killed her daughter.
Thirty-one-year-old Ms Wilson, who worked as an accounts clerk at offshore firm Subsea 7’s Westhill base, was 36-weeks pregnant with her third child – a son – at the time.
Neither she nor her boy, later named Harry, survived, despite efforts to revive them.
Mrs Wilson, of Steelstrath, near Laurencekirk, said she did not think a quicker response time by the Scottish Ambulance on the day would have prevented the tragedy.
She said: “It was more or less instant (when they died) and it wouldn’t matter if the ambulances had come five minutes earlier.
“If someone is gone, they are gone.”
An ambulance service report reveals that the first mercy crew arrived 15 minutes 56 seconds after the initial 999 call was made.
A second crew arrived in just under 17 minutes.
The target response for a Category A call – the most serious type – is eight minutes, with 75% of such emergencies to be reached within the time limit.
Mrs Wilson added: “It doesn’t take away the loss and it doesn’t take away the questions about what exactly happened.
“But we know there was no arrhythmia, no cardiomyopathy, no evidence of anything wrong with Amy.
“They have done hundreds and hundreds of tests and everything has come back negative.”
Mrs Wilson said developing technologies could produce a fresh diagnosis in the future.
But she said she may never know what happened to her daughter and grandson.
She added: “New technology and new research may just throw up something completely different that they have not come across before.
“But it may be that I won’t know in my lifetime what happened to them.”
Ms Wilson is also survived by her two daughters, Halle, three, Chloe, eight, and her partner Peter Reid, who works for Bibby Offshore.
Mr Reid attended a meeting at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary with Mrs Wilson to discuss Amy’s case with a geneticist.
With no conclusions yet reached, doctors will continue testing using samples of her DNA.
Mr Reid said: “Of course you want to know why this happened, particularly in case there is something we need to know for the children’s sake.”