Only five years since her good friend died of breast cancer, Penny Lancaster struggled to cope when she learned that her sister-in-law was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer, on the same day that she learned she was pregnant.

The excitement of having a second child with husband Rod Stewart was quickly replaced by horror when Lancaster said she “felt like her baby had gone.”

In 1999, Penny Lancaster was at a party with her friend, Maria Falco, who playing Cupid, encouraged her to speak with Rod Stewart.

“Lots of people take credit for getting Rod and I together but it was actually Maria…when Maria saw Rod she dared me to go up and ask him for his autograph,” Lancaster said. “…It’s still hard to believe that she’s not here.”

Though Falco was there for the birth of their first son, she was not there in 2007 when Lancaster wed the legendary rocker at a medieval monastery in Italy’s Portofino.

And the trauma Lancaster experienced from losing her close friend continued to haunt her.