THE first time Alex Eades saw her daughter Charlotte’s name on the front of a Brighton bus, she burst into tears.

“Seeing it was very surreal,” said Alex. “It is the number 27 bus, which was the route Charlotte took to school, and I drive past the bus stop on my way to work.”

The appearance of Charlotte’s name on the Brighton and Hove Bus Company bus marks what would have been her daughter’s 22nd birthday on February 18. It also came a few days before the third anniversary of her death from brain cancer yesterday.

The bus company, which receives many suggestions for names to honour local people, decided that Charlotte’s nomination stood out because of her “inspirational” story.

The company’s managing director Martin Harris said: ”Charlotte’s story is a very sad and tragic one, and her family and friends must be hurting so badly, but it’s also such a beautiful story of hope and joy and of the human spirit. It’s truly uplifting.”

Charlotte, who lived with Alex, her father Terry and brother Miles, 24, in Brighton, passed away a few days after her 19th birthday in 2016.

After her diagnosis, she had wanted to raise awareness of glioblastoma multiforme, the little-known rare and almost always terminal form of brain cancer she had, and began posting a series of funny, emotional and poignant videos on YouTube.

“I will make something good of having this cancer,” Charlotte had said. “I will show others that it is not all bad. I choose to live life to the full and love every second on this earth, good or bad.”

Her videos have now reached more than six million people in countries around the world, and her YouTube channel is kept alive by Alex and Miles as a resource for young cancer patients and their families.

In 2017, Alex, Miles and family friend Cressy Brooks launched the charity Charlotte’s BAG, which stands for Battle Against Glioblastoma and was also named after Charlotte’s love of handbags, to raise money for research into glioblastoma and to raise awareness.

So far, it has raised £190,000, with every penny going to its cause, and has received “brilliant” support from the bus company, which has carried posters about the charity in its buses. The charity is also supported by some of the world’s top neuro specialists at King’s College Hospital London, where a laboratory is named after Charlotte and which will soon be able to employ a researcher to help speed up test results.

The charity also has its first patron: the best-selling Brighton-based crime writer Elly Griffiths, who is a friend of the family. She said: “I worked with Charlotte on her writing for her blogs and she was a very talented writer. She was a very strong person, a very funny, nice, normal girl who loved her family, friends and fashion.

“Charlotte had great strength and reserves of courage and I think having her name on the bus is a very fitting tribute to her. The number 27 is my local bus so I will think of her every time I’m on it.”

Working for the charity helps keep Alex going. “You either sink or swim,” she said. “I have chosen to swim.”

Alex, who works at Cardinal Newman School in Hove, added: “I’m not strong – it’s just that I do not have a choice. You are thrown into this. I want people to remember Charlotte. She was a person, she lived, and I want people to know who she was.”

Charlotte, a typical teenage girl who loved fashion, make-up, music and cats, and had planned to go to college to study beauty therapy, began to suffer headaches in 2013 at the age of 16 and was diagnosed with anaplastic astrocytoma, which developed into glioblastoma in the following three years.

Charlotte refused to be defined by her illness and was determined to make a difference. She had previously suffered from anxiety problems and was bullied at school, but, as Alex and Miles have written on the charity’s website, “cancer helped Charlotte find her voice” by giving her the confidence to create her videos and to make speeches to audiences of several hundred people. “Cancer gave Charlotte so much, and took so much from the rest of us,” wrote Miles, who is now studying at Cambridge University.

The loss of Charlotte has affected each family member in different ways. “Miles and Charlotte were very close and Miles no longer has that soul mate,” Alex said. “What I suppose I really miss is having someone to shop with and watch movies together and drink wine together. I have not gone into central Brighton for three years because I want to remember the shops as they were when I was there with Charlotte.

“She was beautiful in every sense of the word, and loving and beloved."

To raise money for Charlotte’s BAG, staff at Cardinal Newman School are taking part in a teachers’ walk in June, when they will walk 52 miles from the left luggage department at Charing Cross Station to Cardinal Newman School.

Visit charlottesbag.com, twitter.com/alexeades1, Facebook.com/people/Charlottes-Legacy and youtube.com/channel/UC6bE4OSCx99n7pF3vtZQMrw.