CHRISTMAS Day will be a ­little bit special for 13-year-old Natalie Cude next week – because this time last year she was in a coma and not expected to live.

The Newton Abbot College student suffered life-threatening head injuries in a collision with a car outside her school on December 17.

The youngster, who has since moved from Newton Abbot to Kingskerswell, survived fracturing her skull in three places, snapping her elbow in half, tearing her spleen and breaking several ribs.

She was dead to the world as her family gathered around her intensive care bed in Bristol Children's Hospital on December 25, 2014. Presents were left unopened. Life was on hold.