MAGAZINE meets Charly Edwards

Eleven months ago Charly Edwards packed a suitcase, threw it into the boot of her father Kevin’s car, jumped into the passenger seat and headed for London’s King Edward Vll’s Hospital. She had been waiting for this day for six years.

So many women in the maternal line of Charly’s family had died of breast cancer — too many for it to be a coincidence. Her grandmother, her great cousin and several great aunts. Statistically, therefore, the odds of the showjumper staying cancer free for the rest of her life were slim.

Until the age of 21, Charly had barely heard of the mutant breast cancer (BRCA) gene that she, like her relatives, carried, except she had read about the Hollywood superstar Angelina Jolie, whose own prophylactic double mastectomy had been prompted by the discovery of this very gene mutation and, with it, an almost dead cert statistical likelihood (87%) of developing the disease.