EBONY Robinson dreams the dreams of any other 12-year-old girl, hoping one day to have a family and pursue a successful career.

Her steely determination to make her mark in life masks the terrible truth that the Bournemouth schoolgirl, who is the inspiration behind a new charity, is suffering from an incurable disease that is gradually robbing her of her independence.

Ebony, who lives with her parents and two older brothers in East Way, is one of only two known ataxia telangiectasia (AT) sufferers in Dorset.

Her mother Lorna, 35, said: “It’s like living with a time bomb that just keeps on ticking. We don’t make plans for the future – there isn’t any point because we know that as Ebony gets older her condition will get worse.”

Ebony was diagnosed at the age of three. “Apart from being late walking and having constant colds, she looked like any other toddler.

“The first sign that anything was wrong was when Ebony became unsteady on her feet. People can be very cruel and I sometimes overheard them saying that she had been drinking too much of my vodka.”

Clinging to the hope that an inner ear infection was affecting her daughter’s balance, the mum-of-three took her to their GP.

But tests at Poole hospital confirmed that Ebony had AT, a debilitating condition believed to occur in one in 40,000 births.

Most sufferers are in a wheelchair by the age of ten because they cannot control their muscles, before succumbing to respiratory failure or cancer by their teens or early 20s. In extremely rare cases patients may live until their 40s.

Ebony’s proud father post office worker Tyrone, 39, said: “We had thought the worst case scenario was that she might need to wear leg braces.

“When the consultant told us that she might not be able to walk or speak properly by the age of ten and could get cancer we knew our lives would never be the same again.”

Despite the devastating prognosis, Ebony has defied the medics but relies increasingly on her electric wheelchair for family outings and her studies at Glenmoor School.

Lorna said: “She has good days and bad ones but her wicked sense of humour helps to keep all our spirits up. It’s too dangerous now for Ebony to go upstairs and we’ve built a ground-floor extension. We will keep adapting our lifestyle to suit her needs.

“Ebony can’t walk around the shops anymore but she can still get about at home, despite crashing into the furniture and often ending up in a heap on the floor.”

She has packed more memories into her 12 years than most people manage in a lifetime, swimming with the dolphins in Florida and meeting a list of sporting stars including former England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson and Tottenham Hotspur boss Harry Redknapp.

Tyrone said: “People have been really good to us, raising thousands of pounds to make Ebony’s life easier, and we are very grateful for their support.”

After forging a friendship with AFC Bournemouth players and Cherries’ charity co-ordinator Adam Murry at Julia’s House, the pretty schoolgirl is now the inspiration for the Ebony Robinson Foundation which aims to raise funds for and awareness of AT.

Speaking at the foundation’s launch, Mr Murry described Ebony as “a complete inspiration”, pledging the club’s unstinting support to the worthy cause.