how to parse a JSON String with jq (or other alternatives)?

I'm trying to get jq to parse a JSON structure like:

{"a" : 1,"b" : 2,"c" : "{\"id\":\"9ee ...\",\"parent\":\"abc...\"}\n"}

That is, an element in the JSON is a string with escaped json.

So, I have something along the lines of$ jq [.c] myFile.json | jq [.id]

But that crashes with jq: error: Cannot index string with string

This is because the output of .c is a string, not more JSON.How do I get jq to parse this string?

My initial solution is to use sed to replace all the escape chars (\":\", \",\" and \") but that's messy, I assume there's a way built into jq to do this?

Thanks!

edit:Also, the jq version available here is:

$ jq --versionjq version 1.3

I guess I could update it if required.