Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I was just 14 and held back my emotions for so long I started to lose my voice
YOUNGEST VICTIM OF 7/7 ON HER RECOVERY 15 YEARS ON
EMMA Craig shook with fear as she sat in London’s Hyde Park on a sunny July morning waiting to give a speech to Prince William and 400 guests.
A decade earlier the carefree 14year-old had been heading for work experience in the City in her smart grown-up suit and kitten heels.
Then a suicide bomber blew himself up in the next Tube carriage and her life changed in an instant.
Emma wasn’t hurt in the 7/7 suicide bombings that killed 52 people and wounded hundreds.
Yet deep, invisible scars left her unable to talk about her experience and her “survivor’s guilt”– and smothering the trauma almost robbed her of the power of speech.
It wasn’t until the 10th anniversary service in 2015 that she was able to describe how 7/7 broke her.
And her moving words, which made headlines around the globe, gave countless other survivors of terror the strength to voice their pain too. “That was the turning point for me,” says Emma, the youngest survivor of the Tube attacks.
INSPIRING
“I was so scared I nearly bolted that day. But I needed to tell my story because what I went through was so different to other survivors’ experiences.
“I couldn’t remember who I was before it happened. And I still don’t know who I’d be if 7/7 wasn’t part of my life.
“After the speech, Prince William came over and hugged me, saying he felt honoured to hear it. He said, ‘Just continue to be strong – never give up’ which was so inspiring.”
Listening to Emma’s story, ahead of the 15th anniversary of 7/7 on Wednesday, is truly inspiring too.
Now living in Sweden with her boyfriend, she works for a financial technology firm and turns 30 later this month. But her memories of the bombing are as vivid as ever.
She was doing work experience at a City law firm, travelling in on the Metropolitan Line from Barnet, South London.
“Near Aldgate, there was a deep, ground-rumbling sound.” Terrorist Shehzad Tanweer, 22, had just detonated his bomb in the next carriage. Co-ordinated attacks also struck two other
Tube trains, at Kings Cross and Edgware Road, and a bus in Tavistock Square.
“The air filled with black soot,” says Emma. “It was hard to see. I was frozen in shock. People who’d been standing around me were on the floor screaming.
“Someone mentioned the word ‘bomb’ but it didn’t really register. I could hear people blown on to the tracks screaming for help.
“There was nothing I could do but as a kid you’re brought up to try to help if someone is in pain. And for a long time afterwards I’d ask myself, ‘Why didn’t I help?’ When the emergency services arrived we had to walk back along the track. I saw someone leaning over a body so I tried to keep my eyes down. I was also terrified about stepping on the electric rails.
“A fireman asked if I was okay. I said I was fine, and he said, ‘I can see you’re not’ and went with me.”
As Emma reached the platform, and word spread of the bomb, her mobile rang – it was her mum who usually travelled with her but had caught an earlier train that morning as she was late for work.
“I said, ‘Mum, I was on the Tube,
I was there’. She just said, ‘Sugar’ – in a long drawn-out breath, and then, ‘I’m on my way’. Above ground people were rushing to help and Mum appeared. She cried and hugged me.” They went to meet Emma’s father and endured a three
I could hear people blown on to the tracks screaming for help
SURVIVOR EMMA ON SUICIDE BOMB ORDEAL
hour walk home. “I watched TV, trying to understand what had happened but it all felt so unreal. I was numb, but you try to carry on. You don’t want your family upset by knowing what you went through, and they won’t bring it up as they are protecting you.
But that just meant we never spoke about it. Yet the anniversaries come round and it’s like a big sign going up saying, ‘Remember that?’”
Emma didn’t suffer nightmares like many survivors. “I had more of what they call ‘body flashbacks’,” she says.
“It’s when your brain doesn’t quite recognise it is having one but your body reacts, putting you back in that ‘fight or flight’ situation. So my brain was telling me I was fine and safe, but then I started to lose my voice.”
Emma was 21 and in her third year at university studying Russian and German when the 7/7 trauma manifested physically. “My voice got husky and it was hard to talk,” she explains. “I felt I was pushing from my shoulders to get a sound into my throat.
“I was sent to a speech specialist who asked if anything had ever happened to me that I’d never been able to talk about. I went, ‘Ah… well’.
“She explained how, when we try not to cry, our voices break because we’re holding back tears. I’d been holding back emotion for so long my voice was constantly breaking.
“My body was telling me I really needed to talk, by not letting me talk.
“I had counselling. But it was so hard as I had to retrain my voice to be able to speak about what I went through. And so many people had died – I thought their families’ problems were much worse than mine, that I should be able to deal with it. “It was classic survivor’s guilt.” Emma still finds it difficult to relax. “My body doesn’t seem to know how to. Because this happened in my formative years, I think my body learned relaxing wasn’t good as it meant I wasn’t on alert.”
Emma was 10 days from her 15th birthday when 7/7 happened and the shockwaves rippled through her adolescence. “It must have changed me, but I don’t know how,” she says.
“I was more grown-up. I lost my naivety, the childish belief everything will be okay. And I carried survivor’s guilt – wondering if I had to live for someone else who died instead of me.”
Did it affect her ability to form relationships? “You end up picking and choosing who you tell about it,” she says. “And you wonder if this is too big a thing for someone else to deal with.
“It would be a bit awkward if, say, a memorial came around and you said, ‘Sorry, I’m in a bit of a mood because this one day I got bombed’.
BROKEN
“But my boyfriend has been really supportive and we’ve been together for more than five years now.”
Meeting other survivors and joining support groups helped her too. “We’re a weird group – one you never want to be part of,” she says. “So many different people have been united by one terrible event.“
When Emma made her 2015 speech she wanted to explain how survivors’ experiences differ greatly too. “After 7/7 people kept saying, ‘London could never be broken’. I said, ‘Fine, but it did break some of us’.
“Some survivors have done amazing things. They set up charities and fight extremism. But others have had breakdowns or marriages have broken down because they lost a child – many families were irrevocably broken.”
Tuesday’s 15th anniversary memorial service, which will be broadcast at noon on YouTube and Vimeo, will be very different this year because of the pandemic.
But Emma is going to speak again via a video message, highlighting the continuing legacy of terror.
“Now, when I talk about 7/7, people will say they were at Westminster or Borough or London Bridge. So the number of people struggling increases year by year.
“I’m now one of the old guard – and the Manchester Arena bombing really brought that home. To see hundreds of young people starting out on the long, hard journey I’ve been on was a real kick in the guts.
“I hope they can get help. But talking can be the hardest part when you are a kid. And it breaks my heart to think of them suffering in silence.”