IT is too sad to take in. Fourteen-year-old Ted Sanderson went off to school from his home in Newton Aycliffe on Tuesday morning perfectly normally. His grandmother, Lynn Wilson, said as he went: “I love you, have a good day.” And he replied: “I love you, nan.”

And she watched him go down the drive, scrunching up his hair to make it as big as possible, not knowing that it would be the last time she would ever see him alive.

Half-an-hour later – just half-an-hour later – she received a call from school saying that he had collapsed and there was no way back.

It doesn’t make sense. A lad with his big hair above him and his whole life in front of him. Gone. A chap with a big personality, an inquiring mind and a “quirky” character, as his school said. Just gone.

There is no one and nothing to blame; no accident to investigate. He just seems to have died. At 14. It is so cruel and so unfair.

Our prayers and our hearts go out to his gran and his family, and also to his friends and schoolmates at Woodham Academy – it must have been so shocking for them.

At the moment, they must all be struggling to take it in, to comprehend the incomprehensible. It will, with time, get better but, however much they try to remember the good times, there will always be a gaping hole beside them.

It is reassuring to see, as we report today, that the community is rallying around them as they are going to need all the help, support and love that can be given. Our thoughts really are with them.