When four-year-old Casey Burke wrote to the Uxbridge Gazette asking us to help her raise money for her best friend Matilda Duncan, she couldn't have known how far her campaign would get her.

Casey asked everyone to pay a pound to go towards an operation to help Matilda - known as Tilly - to walk unaided.

Both the best friends, who met while at Coteford Infant School in Fore Street, Eastcote, have cerebral palsy, which means they can only walk with the help of walking frames.

Just days after the story of Casey and Tilly's campaign was published in January this year, an incredible £40,000 was raised.

In May, Matilda was able to have a selective dorsal rhizotomy operation at Great Ormond Street Hospital, at a cost of just over £25,000.

Matilda's mum Rachel Knowles still pays almost £1,000 a month for Tilly's physiotherapy - a cost she would never have afforded without the help of generous donations to the Walking Matilda campaign - many sent in from complete strangers.

"It is still completely overwhelming," Miss Knowles, who lives with Matilda and her twin brother Matthew in Porters Way, West Drayton, said.

"The first time she walked on her own it was amazing, I was in tears - but they were tears of happiness.

"Even now when I look at her I can't stop crying. She has done so well in such a short time. She is getting up off of her knees herself and sitting up and down on her own.

"Her brother loves having his sister to play with. At the park she can get herself up on the slide on her own, something she could never do before, I can't believe it," she said.

Matilda has done so well since her operation that she is even planning to conquer her dream next month - by starting dance classes.

"This is all she has ever wanted to do," her mum explained. "She has always wanted to dance and after Tilly was on TV after her operation, a teacher at the English National Ballet called us up and said - what can we do to help?"

Matilda will make a very special trip to the ballet school in September to watch older dancers in action before starting at a dance class for youngsters on a Saturday morning.

"She starts back at school next week and I am hoping she will walk down the corridor without any help for the first time," Miss Knowles said.