We are pair me and John. Always have been and always will be. Since he first took me out nearly 25 years ago on a blind date we have been inseparable. He’d like me to say it was his good looks and his masculinity that bowled me over. But I knew as sipped my drink in a pub in Hackney on the day we met that he was a good, kind man. That’s my John. That’s what I fell for. I married him a few months later. Since then we have raised a family and lead a normal life.

When he went to work on 7/7 – it was a Thursday - it was just another day. But he had to go to occupational health for an eye test which I knew might mean he would be home later than usual. I went to work at Haggerston Girls’ School in Shoreditch where I’m an administrative officer. We are both early risers and we left our house in South Ockendon, Essex, probably wishing we had won the lottery and didn’t have to work anymore. Just like anybody else.

It must have been around 9.20am when a message popped up on my computer at school from Sky News saying that there had been a massive power surge on the underground and it was causing disruption. ‘I bet John’s caught up in that I thought. He won’t be a happy bunny!’

But then very quickly there was another message. And my friends in the office started to chatter. Staff in the library had the TV on and they were relaying messages to us. It was bad. It was a bomb. The news was coming in thick and fast. Not just one bomb, but more. Bus bombs, tube bombs, suicide bombers. I couldn’t keep up with it as the story broke. But nobody was doing any work any more. It felt like London was under attack. My first thought was to call John on his mobile. But I couldn’t get through. I knew I wouldn’t be able to. Even if he wasn’t caught up in it there was every chance he would be underground on his way to the eye test. I was shaking and tearful. I must have tried a thousand times to contact him but every time I got the ‘No service’ message. News reports of dozens of people dead came in on the office TV news. I thought he was dead. I was going to pieces but holding together all at the same time. It was pure hell for me sitting there and not knowing. All sorts of thoughts go through your mind. How will I cope without John and his cheeky sense of humour. I once asked him to look into my ear because it was sore and when I asked him what he could see he said: ‘A toaster.’ Crazy thoughts went through my mind. Oh my God, I can’t lose him. Not just for me but the kids. We’d been married 24 years and have a daughter Nicola, 32, and twin brothers John and Robert, both 23. And now we have two grandsons Louis, 4, and Jake, six months. I couldn’t lose him.

John was off duty when it happened because he was going for the test. I only found out later that as hundred of terrified commuters were scrambling out of Aldgate tube station, John had headed down into the tunnel with everyone else running the other way to escape. When I heard about it reminded me of that brave fireman in New York on 9/11 who was seen going up the burning tower when everyone else was heading down to safety.

‘Instinct took over,’ he told me afterwards. He said: ‘humanity kicked in and I had to help.

‘I think it was divine intervention,’ he told me because he stopped at Benji’s sandwich bar near Aldgate tube as an after thought to get a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. He was expecting a long wait at occupational health and thought he might need a bite to keep him going.

It was 8.51am when the bomb went off at Aldgate and John was walking through the barrier at the moment it blew.

‘If it hadn’t been for that sandwich, I wouldn’t have been there.’ he told me afterwards.

While I was watching the TV reports of carnage, and fearing I had lost him, John had run into the station supervisor’s office and found her in tears. He told her to ring the emergency services and to switch off the electrical current to the tracks. He knew it was a bomb. He threw his sandwich in the bin, put on a high visibility orange vest over his uniform and went straight down into it.

He has worked on the underground for 17 years and that particular stretch of track he knows like the back of his hand. He knew he had to get down there and lead people to safety if he possibly could. There would have been confusion in the dark and John knew he could help. He knew the ways in and the ways out. And as an underground worker he felt an extra duty to do what he could. John would never turn his back on anybody who needed help. He has always been the same.

‘There were bodies everywhere, Ange,’ he told me afterwards.

‘I felt bad stepping over bodies and leaving them, but I knew I had to get into the tunnel and get to the train to help those still trapped,’ he said.

‘He said there was blood everywhere. He didn’t know it was a suicide bomber. He thought another bomb would go off and he had to get people out as quick as he could. When you are in it and not watching TV it doesn’t cross your mind it’s a suicide bomber. His idea was to get people out, simple. People who were seriously injured begged him for help but he had to ignore them to get to the train.  I know that has caused him upset.

He kept telling people which way to go and when he got to the train it was twisted metal everywhere. It took him 15 minutes to get the walking wounded away. He helped people of the carriages, pointed them in the right direction and calmed people where he could. Then the emergency services arrived and John got the emergency lighting inside the train going for the rescue workers.

It was only when the bomb squad arrived and he saw all their protective clothing that he began to think about himself. Typically, he made a bit of a joke about it.

He told me: ‘I looked at them all padded up as we moved through one of the carriages looking for survivors and I looked at my flimsy jacket and I thought “It’s time to leave.

He still thought another bomb could go off. One of the last things he saw as he left the tunnel were the dead still lying there. Some of them had their clothes completely blown off. That still haunts him. People lying there with just their socks or pants, or bra left on.

Those people had got up that morning and got dressed for work and that is how they ended up.

When John got back up to street level he looked like he had come out of a coal mine with his face and clothes all blacked up. But he didn’t stop. He walked across the road to nearby Aldgate East and went down to the platform there and helped people off there. He helped two pregnant women. He still didn’t know they were suicide bombers or anything about the bus bomb. He just kept helping where he could. I still hadn’t managed to get through on his phone.

My good friends at work Gill and Isin (corr) were comforting me. I feared the worst as the all the news came in of the walking wounded leaving the station entrances. I still couldn’t get through to John. All I knew was that he was down there. Of that I was sure. But I’d still had no word.

He must have looked in a right state because an ambulance worker pulled him to one side outside Aldgate East station and took his pulse. His heart was racing and even though John tried to stay at the scene they insisted he went to hospital and they bundled him into an ambulance and took him to A&E at the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel.

All the time I kept trying to get him on the phone.

Then, finally at about 11ish I heard the sound I had been praying for. At last, John’s phone was ringing.

‘Hello Ange,’ he said. Just like he always does on his mobile. He was alive. ‘Thank God,’ I thought.

I broke down with relief. I still get tearful thinking about that moment. John broke down too. He said hearing my voice hit him like a ton of bricks. He knew by then from people in the hospital what was going on. The adrenalin stopped pumping and he started to take it all in.

He has been awarded the MBE for his actions on that day and he got to meet the Queen and Tony Blair. Even then he made a joke about things because he was presented to the Queen twice in one day, first to get his medal and the second time at an evening reception. ’People will talk Ma’m – us meeting twice in one day.’ He said. Typical! Cheeky as ever.

John just says he did what anyone would have done and that there were a lot of other heroes that day on the underground but I know it took something special – courage - to be the first one to go down into that station – into the unknown as it was to him – to help others. Especially when he was the only one and everyone else was going the other way. I’m very, very proud of him. The Queen knew he was off duty when he went down there and she told him he had been very, very courageous.

John’s a true Brit and coming from the Queen that really meant something to him. John’s glad the suicide bombers are dead because he doesn’t think people that would do that deserve to live. But John is a live and let live kind of bloke. I think we need more like him.

Everyone will remember him for his bravery that day but I will remember it as the day I thought I had lost him.

That night when he got back to the house I was waiting for him. I was amazing just to see him standing there in the living room. We gave each other a massive hug. The relief of the moment was something I have never experienced before. He may have been brave but as I stood with him in our living room all I could think was ‘he’s safe’.

John still has flash backs and sleepless nights but London Underground have been fantastic to him. With their help and support we are working through it.

We know it will take a bit of time to come to terms with what he saw that day but he is getting there. He is working as normal and we are fine.

He may be everyone’s hero but I’m just so happy that the kindest man I know is still by my side.

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