A FAMILY from Colchester had a Royal appointment when they chatted with the Duchess of Cambridge.

John and Tracy Cottis were among those who met Kate in her role as patron of the East Anglia’s Children’s Hospice.

Their son Jack, six, uses the hospice’s Treehouse centre, in Ipswich.

Jack suffered a brain haemorrhage around the time of his birth and lives with an undiagnosed genetic condition which claimed the life of his sister Amy.

She died in 2007, aged three. Jack, who goes to Lexden Springs School in Colchester, is wheelchair bound, blind and has to be fed through a tube.

Jack, John, 51, and Tracy, 48, of Shrub End, Colchester, were invited to meet the Duchess of Cambridge at the launch of the hospice’s new £10million fundraising appeal for a new hospice facility in Norfolk.

John said: “She came and crouched down and held Jack, spoke about him and asked what the hospice was able to offer for him.

“She appreciated how they provide therapy and how important that was for him. My wife told her one of the things he reacts to is music therapy.

“The therapist has a guitar and Jack has started to reach out and pluck the strings. He gives it a twang and that is really quite something.”

John said it felt “unreal” as the pregnant duchess – the charity’s patron – chatted away to he and his wife, who is a parent trustee for the hospice.

He admitted: “It is almost as if it didn’t happen.”

Tracy became a trustee in 2009 and also met Kate when she attended the opening of the Treehouse centre in 2012.

John added: “She was just so natural, and really did seem genuinely concerned. She seemed to become emotional and displayed a lot of empathy towards the families.”

Jack, who also has a brother, Oliver, 12, and sister Lucy, nine, was born about a month early by emergency caesarean.

He has frequent hospital appointments and is due to have a hip replacement operation in the new year, having already undergone one.

Jack’s weekend breaks at the hospice allow the rest of the family to spend time together.