I REMEMBER my daughter sustaining a nasty black eye in a playground accident when she was a toddler.

For a few days, I felt a palpable sense of guilt as parents looked at her bruising and looked at us. Were their whispers ones of accusatory suspicion or were we just paranoid?

It’s for that very reason that you have to feel for the parents of little Harry Churchill and his new-born brother Cody.

This is our second feature about the Churchill family and the sight of chirpy little Harry’s face is no less distressing now than it was when I first saw our photos of his tragic disfigurement.

His parents Chris and Steph know the outlook is grim for Harry and if that’s not hard enough to bear, the constant stares and whispers as members of the public see the little lad’s condition must be agonising.

Whatever we think of the risks taken by the couple in bringing another child into the world – one with a one-in-four chance of being born with the dreadful disease – I am not alone in believing that the risk was worth taking. That the dice have fallen so cruelly for them – and that Cody faces the same ordeal in his young life – is truly heartbreaking and seems just so unfair.

Let’s just hope that through the course of their short lives, both boys – and their parents – are afforded the kind of understanding and sympathy they deserve.