Speech that eased pain for Emma,14

EMMA Craig was shaking with fear as she sat in London’s Hyde Park five years ago waiting to give a speech to Prince William and 400 guests.

A decade earlier the carefree 14-year-old had been heading off for work experience in the City in her grown-up suit and kitten heels.

Then Shehzad Tanweer blew himself up in the next Tube carriage, near Aldgate.

Emma wasn’t hurt physically. Yet invisible scars and survivor’s guilt almost stole her power of speech.

It wasn’t till that tenth anniversary service at Hyde Park that Emma was able to tell how 7/7 broke her.

Youngest survivor

Emma’s moving speech gave countless other victims of terror the strength to voice their pain too.

“That was the turning point for me,” said Emma, “but I was so scared I nearly bolted that day.

“After the speech, Prince

William hugged me, saying he felt honoured to hear it.”

Now living in Sweden with her boyfriend, Emma recalled she usually went to work from

Barnet, North London, with her mum.

But mum was running late and she took an earlier Tube.

“I just remember there was this deep, rumbling sound,” said Emma.

“The air filled with soot. I was frozen in shock. People around me who’d been standing were on the floor screaming.

“I could hear people who had been blown on to the tracks crying for help.

“You’re brought up to help if someone is in pain. For a long time after I’d ask, ‘Why didn’t I help?.’“

Emma was led along the track past bodies to the platform and her mobile phone rang – it was Mum.

“She just said ‘Sugar’ and then, ‘I’m on my way,’” said Emma.

The trauma became a taboo subject and Emma was in her third year at university studying Russian and German when it manifested physically.

“My voice started getting husky and it was difficult to make a sound,” she said.

“A speech specialist said when we try not to cry, our voices break because we’re holding back tears. My body was telling me I really needed to talk by not letting me talk.

“I carried the guilt of surviving, thinking ‘Do I have to live my life for someone who died instead of me?’.”

Meeting other survivors and joining support groups helped. Emma will speak again, via video, at Tuesday’s anniversary.

She said: “People kept saying, ‘London could never be broken.’ I said ‘Fine, but it did break some of us.’ Some have set up charities to fight extremism.

“Others have had nervous breakdowns or their marriages have broken down because they lost a child. Many were irrevocably broken.”