There is something that no one tells you before you have a baby, how parenthood plants a seed of pure vulnerability in you that was absent before. The baby arrives, immediately tethered to your most profound emotions, and thereafter almost everything that happens to him or her has the power to affect you too. The worst fear is not only that something terrible might happen to a child, but that it might happen in circumstances in which the parent cannot provide any trace of comfort or protection. That fear was realised for Mrs Johnson, and for the other parents of Hindley and Brady’s victims: their pain at the grotesque revelations of the Moors murders remains unbearable to contemplate. Ann West, the late mother of 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, the youngest victim, said straightforwardly that she would kill Hindley if she were ever released, and few could have blamed her. Mrs Johnson said last year: “I still feel very angry, as angry as I ever did.” Those painstaking, civil letters she penned to Hindley and Brady were for Keith, and Keith only. She wanted what is left of him back, the bones that she bore, to honour and grieve for him. She wanted to give him a Christian burial. He was on his way to see his grandmother when they tricked him into helping look for a dropped glove.