They look like any normal happy family. But the smiles conceal a tragic sadness.

Their two-year-old son Jay has the degenerative Infantile Battens Disease. He is dying.

Jay Theobald was diagnosed with the disease when he was 14-months-old.

Now he has now lost the ability to laugh and play. He is starting to lose his balance. He has just enough sight left to see the Teletubbies.

There is no treatment for his illness and he is on drugs to alleviate anxiety - a condition of the disease - and the screaming this causes. But Jay is surrounded by love.

And thanks to the kindness of friends he may get to visit his grandparents in Spain.

Jay's dad Steve, an Environment Agency operative and his mum Fran, of Rawlings Crescent, High Woods, Colchester, have four other children but Fran says 99 per cent of their time is taken up with Jay's 24-hour care.

He was the couple's fourth child. Fran said: "He was perfect when he was born but I started to notice things were not right when he was eight-months-old."

Infantile Batten's Disease is the same illness which took the life of Essex youngster Rhys Daniels, a tragedy which touched hearts nationwide.

"The children have coped with it badly," Fran said. "Their work at school has suffered and it is hard to explain to them why the doctor cannot make Jay better.

But Fran said the experience of having a terminally ill child has bought the family much closer together.

And it is this that has prompted friends to open a trust fund at the NatWest Bank to collect money so the whole family can hire a villa in Spain, where Jay's grandparents live, for a week in the next six months.

Spain is where Jay's grandparents live and they want to spend time with them as a family.

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