SHE was just five years old when a crazed gunman burst into her school gym, opened fire on her class and shot her twice.

Aimie Adam, now 25, was one of the most seriously injured of the 12 classmates who survived the massacre at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland, on March 13, 1996.

But as the 20th anniversary of the Dunblane massacre looms, Ms Adam has told The Sun she won’t let the gunman’s actions ruin her life.

Thomas Hamilton, 43, murdered 16 students and a teacher in a four-minute killing spree with legal weapons, but Ms Adams managed to escape from further bloodshed after her PE teacher Eileen Harrild — who had been shot in the arms and chest — told her to drag herself into a side room away from the shooter.

“I was on the floor and Mrs Harrild was on the ground beside me and she realised I had been injured,” Ms Adam told The Sun.

“She told me to crawl into the gym cupboard. I don’t remember but I must have made it.”

Ms Adam had been shot in the buttocks and in the hip, shattering her right thigh.

“I don’t remember feeling any pain. There was a weird metallic taste in my mouth and a fuzzy tingly feeling all over my body and I knew everything was not right in my leg,” she said.

The massacre only ended when Mr Hamilton took his own life, but it led to the tightening of gun laws.

Dressed in combat gear and armed with two revolvers and two pistols, the gunman cut phone wires before entering the gym where he murdered 16 children aged between five and six, and their 45-year-old teacher Gwen Mayor.

“Everyone was chatting and laughing and I was running around — and then I’m not sure what happened,” Ms Adam said.

“You’d think you’d remember something so dramatic but I can’t. It’s probably a good thing.

“I can’t remember even if I saw Hamilton’s face. I can’t remember him walking into the room, I can’t remember anything about him.

“I wasn’t aware he’d shot himself. I had no idea what was going on. You’re five years old — you’re not supposed to be exposed to that sort of stuff.”

After the massacre, Ms Adam spent three weeks in the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow where she underwent multiple operations. She was the last survivor to leave hospital, returning home in a wheelchair.

“I was so restricted in the things I could do. They’d got me a big red orthopedic chair and I used to sit in that or stay in bed,” she said.

“When you’re five you want to be outside and running about. I would watch TV or do colouring.”

Ms Adam was inundated with gifts, including letters, flowers and money.

But she said they all now sit in her grandmother’s loft.

“I’ve never read them. My family also have all the newspaper articles, I’ve not read them either. That’s deliberate,” Ms Adam said.

“I’ve tried to blank them and not bring anything I hadn’t felt before or open a Pandora’s box.”

A year after the attack, Ms Adam was a flower girl at her father’s wedding in Cyprus — where she was dubbed ‘Little Miss Courage’ — and returned to Dunblame Primary School in a wheelchair.

The scene of the massacre had been demolished, but lifts and a chairlift had been installed.

But Ms Adam struggled to find any sense of normalcy as she had a personal assistant and couldn’t do normal kid activities.

“I couldn’t do PE, play rounders or go rollerblading. The Spice Girls had platform trainers I’d have loved, but I couldn’t wear. I went through school in a wheelchair, or using crutches or frames with pots on my leg and pins and scaffolding on my thigh,” she said.

“After I went back I was a very quiet pupil — sort of withdrawn. I kept asking to make sure there was no bad man coming to the school, and wanted reassurance.”

She also struggled to keep up with the school work as she had to attend physio treatment two days a week.

When Ms Adam was 12, she moved to Aberdeen where she was teased and bullied by the other kids because of her injury.

“I got called ‘peg leg’ and the rumour was I had a wooden leg. I thought my life was over. At first, they didn’t know I was a Dunblane survivor,” she said.

“The nicknames were difficult to listen to. In Dunblane nobody said those sorts of things.”

Ms Adam started working as a trainee dental nurse after school, but is now studying a degree in mental health nursing at Aberdeen University.

Despite her experiences, Ms Adam has grown into a confident woman who refuses to let her trauma define her. The only sign she survived the Dunblane massacre is a slight limp.

She tells strangers it was caused by ‘the accident’.

“It stops me having to explain — people think I’ve been in a car crash or had a fall,” Ms Adam said.

But she is still affected by sudden loud noises like popping bottles of champage.

“Balloons bursting and fireworks are a big fear and party poppers as well. I really don’t like those. I get scared, have a little cry and then I sort myself out,” she said.

Ms Adam refuses to talk about her fellow survivors out of respect, but admitted she sometimes feel guilty.

“It is 20 years and I am still living with the devastation of it. Nobody got to choose that day,” she said.

When it comes to Hamilton, she said: “I absolutely hate the guy. But he’s dead and can’t do anything to ruin anybody else’s life.”

The former head teacher of Dunblane Primary School recently broke his 20-year silence to describe how he remains racked by guilt over the tragedy.