Healed: The remarkable story of the woman who was the face of the 7/7 bombings

Incredible journey: Davinia Douglass was badly burnt in the Tube bombing
Sri Carmichael12 April 2012

The image of her clutching a gauze mask to her face became an emblem of the 7/7 terror attacks.

Staggering across the pavement outside Edgware Road Tube station, a former firefighter guiding her, Davinia Turrell was suffering from horrendous burns.

Today, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the bombings, Mrs Douglass as she is called now after getting married last year, told the Evening Standard of her incredible recovery.

While her trauma was so public, her recovery has been a private crusade — one she says has left her stronger than ever.

She said: "I went from being convinced that I would be seriously scarred for life and that my life would be ruined, to being hopeful that the medics who were looking after me would be able to put me back together as I had been before.

"The worst point was at night when I was awake, alone in the hospital bed and wondering just what the future held."

The 29-year-old's features now bear virtually no sign of the horror she suffered after the "ball of fire" ripped through the Tube carriage and scorched the skin from the entire left side of her face.

As her weeping wounds slowly healed, Mrs Douglass re-lived in her mind the moment Mohammad Sidique Khan detonated a bomb at 8.50am feet from her on a crowded westbound Circle line train, killing six passengers.

That hot Thursday morning, Mrs Douglass was on her way to work near Paddington as a corporate tax trainee.

"The train was just pulling out of Edgware Road station," she said. "I was thinking about the half day's leave from work I had scheduled and that I should really be in work by now to get everything done before I left at lunchtime.

"Then there was a loud bang and a ball of fire appeared from my left hand side and seemed to go right round me and then quickly retracted."

Unlike in disaster films, she said, initially no one screamed.

"After the explosion, the carriage was actually very quiet. Everyone was too shocked to scream or shout. The lights in my carriage went out, but the lights on the other train and the other carriages on my train were all on so it wasn't dark, it was dusky.

"No one knew what had happened, but I wasn't in any pain. I couldn't see very clearly as I lost a contact lens."

Mrs Douglass had no idea at that moment how badly hurt she was, even when other passengers screamed in horror at her face. She said: "I walked through the entire length of the train. I remember people screaming and sounding shocked as I walked through the back carriages."

Once she emerged above ground, covered in dust from the tunnel, she was seen by a paramedic in the station and comforted by a fellow passenger.

She said: "I didn't realise I was injured, I was still in shock. I remember telling people that I needed to get to work."

Mrs Douglass was taken with other walking wounded to the Marks & Spencer store across the road from the station, where the emergency services had set up a temporary triage unit.

The mask which she was photographed in was given to her to apply to her face.

It was designed for someone lying on a stretcher and had no straps to hold it in place and only small holes for her eyes that left Mrs Douglass struggling to see. Former fireman, Paul Dadge, who had been helping the paramedics log details of the injured, offered an arm to steer her across the road to the makeshift A&E station in the lobby of the Hilton hotel.

The pair were strangers but the photograph that was taken of them running away from the Tube has forever linked them together.

Mr Dadge told the Standard: "I just happened to be standing next to Davinia in M&S so I said, Let's go'. We hadn't really met, I'd just taken her details. I was on auto-pilot.

"We ran out into Edgware Road and I saw passers-by looking at us from behind the cordon on our left and this wall of photographers in front of us.

"I remember thinking this is what it must feel like at a film premiere. It was surreal.

"At that point we still thought there had been a power surge. We didn't know there had been a bomb."

Mrs Douglass said: "I remember seeing the photographer standing in front of Paul and me. I'm very grateful to [Paul] for helping me. After that it was all a bit of a blur."

The pair have only met twice briefly since, at 7/7 memorial services, and have "exchanged pleasantries" each time. "I guess people expect Davinia and me to be close," said Mr Dadge. "But we only met for two minutes." Mrs Douglass went back to work gradually after a few months of treatment and recuperation.

It is the incongruity between her physical healing and mental scars which has encouraged her to talk publicly of her ordeal.

Despite the weeks of "wonderful" treatment she received from doctors at Chelsea and Westminster hospital, she could not see a psychologist during her recovery as the few employed were overstretched.

She is backing a fundraising campaign by the hospital to pay for the burns unit — the only specialist centre covering the South-East — to hire its own psychologist so everyone who needs help gets it. "I had help from a post traumatic stress counsellor but there were no dedicated psychologists attached to the burns unit," she said.

"I am wholly committed to raising funds for the Psychological Screening Project as I know that burns can have many lasting psycho-social effects on people, no matter the size and location of their injuries and scars.

"I think it is wonderful that the unit is always striving to increase the already excellent quality of care that they provide to their patients.

"I am very honoured and excited that the Chelsea and Westminster Health Charity has asked me to help with this burns unit appeal." Her consultant surgeon, Greg Williams, who runs the unit, said: "We're not magicians, but we do what we can to get the best possible outcome for patients. Some people's burns heal better than others.

"But even people who have almost no scarring at all can be very traumatised by the incident that caused the injury, and their families can be traumatised. The mental healing process can be incapacitating for some individuals, who withdraw from day to day society."

Mrs Douglass, a very private person, has also relied upon the support of her friends and family to help her move on.

She found love with business consultant Erik Douglass, 37, whom she married on Valentine's Day last year.

"When something like this happens, people's kindness actually overwhelms the bad," she said.

Strangers from all over the world sent her get well cards.

"I think fundamentally I am the same person, except that I feel a lot stronger," she said. "I never saw myself as a victim. No matter how bad things get, there's always a flicker of light at the end of any very long and dark tunnel."

But she finds it impossible to understand the bombers' motives.

She said: "It still baffles me to this day how people can be so brutally cruel to each other.

"To say that I wasn't worried about another terrorist attack would be a lie, but I truly believe that the security forces and the police are doing everything they can to keep us all safe.

"London is my home and I continue to use the Tube every day."

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