Losing a leg when I was a child didn’t stop me living my ballet dreams

I keep all my old legs under my bed in my bedroom. The first one, which I had when I was a toddler, is very small, very plain. Then I had my Peppa Pig version; the next had pictures, and the ones after that had stickers, stories of children playing, and butterflies. There was one version that my friends all signed. My family used to call them my “new, new, new leg”. I’ve lost count of how many. As I have grown up, my legs have grown with me.

On April 25 2007, when I was just over two-years-old, I was walking with my mum Sarah and my grandmother Elizabeth near Mortlake bus station in south-west London when the 209 bus crashed into us. Gran Gran was killed instantly and my mum was seriously injured. I lost my right leg, below the knee. The bus driver was sent to prison.

I don’t remember a time “before”, when I had two legs, nor do I really remember the 25 or 30 operations I had, though I do recall my first nice, brilliant surgeon, Simon Eccles, who looked after me when I was young. My parents say I was vibrant and happy. I loved going to “hospital school” in the Chelsea & Westminster. I am now under the care of Prof Tim Briggs at Stanmore Orthopaedic and he is great. My mum says I’m one of the strongest people she knows and has never let anything drag me down. My dad remembers the day when I was a bridesmaid at my godmother’s wedding, a few months after the crash, when I was two and a half. I threw off my crutches and walked on my own on my first prosthetic leg, down the aisle.

My parents tell me that having one leg has never been an issue for me, in the same way that having two legs just isn’t an issue for them. I suppose I felt a bit different from my friends at school because I couldn’t run as fast. But I could walk, jump and skip and everyone was really nice to me.

I never felt “This isn’t fair”. I’ve been able to take the wins and to take the losses. Anyway, there was always something to make me smile, such as our family holidays to the Lake District and wet camping holidays with lots of friends in Wales and Cornwall, and my older brother and sister, Barnaby and Sapphire, who make me laugh. There was no way they ever felt sorry for me, But I won’t let my brother push me in my wheelchair because he pushes it too fast. He thinks it’s funny. We also used to get a “fast pass” at theme parks and avoid the queues, which was fine by me. And my dog Queenie, who is nearly 16-years-old, makes me very happy.

When I was six, I took up ballet. I’ve always loved to dance. I was marked down in my Grade One exam at the age of seven for footwork – because I couldn’t point my foot. But how could I – I didn’t have a right foot! I didn’t know about it at the time, but my parents were furious.

I carried on with lessons on my own with a local dance teacher and then started to practise on my own after watching episodes of TV drama The Next Step, about a group of teenage contemporary dancers. I didn't take another dance exam after that first one.

Now that I’m older, I don’t feel that grades really mean anything and it makes me even more certain that amputees need the proper prosthetic legs to run, and to dance.

In 2011, my mum and her sister, Victoria, started a charity called Elizabeth’s Legacy of Hope (named after my Gran Gran) to raise money to provide amputees with the right operations and prosthetic limbs in Africa and India.

My dad – who works at The Daily Telegraph – had raised tens of thousands of pounds for amputees in general, by writing an article in the Telegraph magazine about what happened to me and my family in 2009.

Over the years, Elizabeth’s Legacy of Hope raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to help around 500 amputee children. It was wound up earlier this year, but we are still raising money for amputee children in India and Africa and my sister Sapphire is running a half-marathon soon.

Finally, when I was eight, I received my first “running blade” – which totally changed my life. But as I became older there was one area of dance I found difficult – I couldn’t dance “en pointe”. So my Dad put a video out on social media, asking for help.

It was viewed 350,000 times, Dad was bombarded with messages and was eventually contacted by a team from the BBC Two series The Big Life Fix.

An inventor called Yusuf Muhammad created a new, special blade that helped me on demi-pointe: a position on the balls of the feet. Later, I got a new leg with the foot fixed in pointe, so I could perform in this way for the first time.

After the Paralympics in 2012, Mum asked the NHS to give me a running blade but they said they were too expensive. So Mum began her own campaign for me and all amputee children to get running blades so they could run around with their friends and live active lives (in addition to her charity fundraising for amputees in India and Africa).

In 2016, she was successful and now all amputee children can apply for NHS running blades! Mum won a Pride of Britain award and we had so much fun meeting so many amazing people.

In 2018, when I was 13, I landed a place on an advanced training programme at the London Contemporary Dance School. I also won a place in the English National Ballet's youth dance company in 2021, after passing highly competitive auditions. I do the same dances as everyone else.

Last summer, I won a place on the summer intensive course at the National Youth Ballet of Great Britain and danced in shows in Birmingham and at Sadler's Wells in London. Then, this summer, I’ll be taking my A-levels, and I have won a place on a three-year degree course to study dance at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds. I’m so excited at the prospect of making new friends and experiencing new places. I still find it difficult to walk a long way or stand for long periods – which you have to do in performances. In 2021, when I was 16, I danced on stage at a Dance for Mobility fundraiser in New York, hosted by the Hollywood actor Kevin Bacon and raising money for Penta Medical Recycling. It was so nice to perform in front of an audience on stage in a proper theatre, instead of just practising in my kitchen.

I loved performing on that stage at the Florence Gould Hall near Broadway – it was truly amazing.

A few months earlier, I travelled to Slovenia to film the Beautiful Movement advert for Toyota. I loved being on set and visiting the enchanting city of Ljubljana. To get this far, I’ve probably had to work harder than the other dancers who are able-bodied.

I turned 18 earlier this month. While I enjoyed the celebrations, I am also frustrated. The Government will no longer provide free running blades for me, nor for any other young adult my age – only walking legs. I’m amazed by this – it deprioritises amputees. It seems to me that the Government is interested in helping people move, but not move properly. And this is something that has to change.

Pollyanna has donated her fee for this article to sponsor her sister Sapphire who is running the Bristol half-marathon to raise money for amputees in Africa. If you would like to sponsor Sapphire, go to stewardship.org.uk/pages/sapphirehopehalfmarathon

As told to Miranda Levy