Pollyanna & SarahHope

Wednesday 25th April 2007 began as a really gorgeous day. The sun was shining really brightly, even at 9am and the summer was around the corner. I could really feel it.

My mother, Elizabeth, had come to stay with my family in Mortlake, South London, so she could visit her new Grandson, who had been born two days earlier. My husband, Christopher, took my son Barnaby, who was seven-years-old and my daughter Sapphire, who was only five, to their primary school and Mummy, my daughter Pollyanna and I left to go to the bus depot.

Pollyanna was just two and had just learnt to walk, but we also took her pram because she was still so tiny. We were really excited to see my sister Victoria's new baby! We crossed over the railway line and I remember lots of shouting at the bus depot and angry honking of horns and it looked really jammed but we did not really think about it.

Pollyanna was holding my mother's hand. We entered the depot, but it happened so fast. The bus was meant to turn right into the depot but instead, it drove at great speed onto the pavement hitting us all. There are no words to describe my feelings, it was too horrific. My mother died at the scene, I was trapped under the bus and I have never regained feeling in my lower leg, which was so damaged.

Twenty feet away, Pollyanna had been flung through the air and her leg was precariously hanging off. There was so much screaming, shouting, panic. All of a sudden police cars, ambulances, chaos and devastation. 

I banged my head so hard against a wall that I slipped in and out of consciousness but remember it all. I think it frightened and shocked the neighbourhood for years and people still remember it 15 years later. A lady who lived in a house behind the bus stop heard the bang and rushed out and wrapped Pollyanna in her coat and I think she saved her life.

Christopher was blue-lighted in a police car to the scene from work and then to the hospital with Pollyanna. It was utterly catastrophic.

Hospitals for Pollyanna and I became a way of life. The warmth of strangers, friends and neighbours was almost overwhelming. I will never forget how amazing people can be. My other two children needed lots of help too, and my husband hardly worked for the next six months.

Life was really challenging and changed forever. My father, my brothers and my sister have never really gotten over the shock of losing our mother like that. My father tragically had a heart attack five years later and he died.

But Pollyanna had the most fabulous care from really incredible surgeons, she had so many operations. It was very traumatic but she was so strong. We had so much support from the NHS, friends and family.

I learnt all about amputee children in developing countries who lose their limbs for terrible reasons, such as road crashes, fires, illness and disability at birth. For thousands of these children, there is often no hope of getting a prosthetic.

So, Christopher and my sister Victoria set up a charity in my mother's name - Elizabeth's Legacy of Hope - to help amputee children in Africa and we try to provide all the same care that Pollyanna has been so lucky to have. Since May 2011, we have helped over 500 amputee children in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Tanzania and now India as well.

Pollyanna always wanted to be a dancer for as long as I can remember. Now she has fulfilled that dream. She has been dancing at The Place in London on the Contemporary Advanced Training Scheme since she was 13. She is in the English National Ballet Youth Company, and she danced with the National Youth Ballet and performed at Sadler’s Wells with a special en pointe ballet leg.

Pollyanna explains why dancing is so special for her: "Movement is where everything begins. The natural feeling of free-falling movement flowing along every joint in your body. Where flowers exist to grow and lions exist to hunt, I exist to move. Always finding new and interesting ways to manipulate my body and expand my creativity, there was never doubt that dance was meant for me.”