I have just come back from watching a play called Limbo: Stories from 7/7, performed by the Verb theatre group. A dramatic perspective on the events of July 7 2005 in London, it was presented via a collection of monologues revolving around a group of fictional characters. I saw it with Richard, a fellow survivor from the Piccadilly line train bomb.

The poetic and passionate performances of the young actors and the emotional reaction of the audience made us both realise how raw the wound left by the events of July 7 is, not just for us who were there and who still smell the smoke and hear the screams in our dreams, but for so many people who live in or who love London.

The attack on the Tube trains and the buses that summer morning was an attack on all of us, anyone who lives and works and travels in this busy, bustling city. About 3,000 people were directly affected: 52 died, hundreds were injured and thousands hurt in a way that cannot be seen from the outside.

The public were the targets, not politicians or those in power. Ordinary people continue to feel they are the targets of terror attacks, every time they use public transport.

Last week the government announced that there was to be no answering of people’s questions through a public inquiry. Instead we are to get a “narrative” of what happened on that day, created with the help of material gathered from intelligence and security agencies and the police.

“But the people on that Tube already know what happened, that is not what we are trying to understand,” Kirsty Morrison, who was on the King’s Cross train, told me. “What is important is why it happened and how it can be prevented from happening again.” If we learn from July 7 and after, it might lessen some of the suffering next time around. It might even save lives.

Miriam Hyman was evacuated from King’s Cross and spoke to her father, John, before she boarded a No 30 bus to make her way to work at a publishing company in Canary Wharf. Her parents searched hospitals for days before they discovered she had been killed when the bus exploded in Tavistock Square. Had she known that the “power surges” initially reported were bombs, her father said, she would not have taken public transport. Did a lack of public information contribute to her death?

Shortly after Miriam was killed it became almost impossible to make mobile phone calls. The mobile phone networks did not work in the first hours after the bombings. Hundreds of thousands of frantic people tried to find out what had happened to loved ones and I have heard dozens of painful accounts from fellow survivors of how they were unable to contact their families and friends. Were the networks deliberately closed down? If so, was that for fear of terrorists using mobiles to detonate bombs? We would like to know so we can understand and forgive some of the lonely agonies of that morning.

Many of the people I have spoken to are full of practical suggestions to improve the response to the aftermath of a disaster, stressing to me that their desire for a public inquiry is out of a desire to get something positive from the experience.

We’ve talked about the communication between carriages, or lack of it, whether each carriage, or the train driver, should carry first aid kits, torches and hammers to smash windows, whether breathing apparatus should be kept in stations for rescue workers and whether there should be guards on trains.

What could be done to improve lines of communication between London Underground’s network control centre and front-line staff? Half an hour after the Tube bombs exploded, a Tube worker described how his boss was still telling him that it was a power surge, while at the same time Sky News was interviewing witnesses describing the carnage. He also asks, “Did tunnel dust, which has been allowed to build up over several years, contribute significantly to the choking difficulties experienced by the survivors?”

My fellow passengers have talked to me of the confusion after the event. The emergency services have been praised for their efficient and calm response: I did not see any ambulances at Russell Square when I emerged 25 minutes after the bomb went off in my carriage. I went to hospital in a black cab.

After I left I heard how volunteer nurses ran to help the injured, and how the ambulances eventually came, and the bravery and kindness of the shocked ambulance and hospital staff is not in doubt. But when 20 survivors and I struggled out of the tunnel at 9.20am we were met not by the medical attention I had promised them as we walked through the tunnel but by scenes of confusion, shocked London Underground staff and bemused commuters.

In the days and weeks that followed many survivors were left alone, traumatised and isolated. A Family Assistance Centre was set up in Victoria after the bombings. Survivors who dropped in talked positively of the experience. But the name misled many, who thought it was only for families of the dead, and so never availed themselves of its facilities, which included counsellors, victim support staff and representatives from the Red Cross, Salvation Army, social workers and volunteers.

Later the centre, renamed as the 7th July Assistance Centre, moved to smaller premises. But the Data Protection Act meant that all survivors and families who had registered under the old name had to be deleted from the database. Many survivors were left in the dark once more.

I set up a website support group for fellow passengers, who contacted me when they read my online diary of the week of the bombs. We have done our best to care for each other since we struggled off the bombed train.

Could more have been done to help victims afterwards? Could better administration have enabled a more co-ordinated response? The Red Cross has recently begun to organise survivor meetings, but few know of them and they are poorly attended.

The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority claiming process has been criticised, and the London Bombings Relief Charitable Fund inevitably does not cover those who walked away apparently uninjured.

But many survivors who fall into that category have nonetheless been profoundly affected. Not being able to use public transport in London, for example, is debilitating and expensive. Could a greater awareness of the victims’ plight have ensured those who needed help got it early on?

It is natural for victims of violence to feel anger. What has impressed me over the past five months has been the commitment of survivors to try and make things better; helping each other back on the Tube, acting as “travel buddies”, e-mailing supportive messages.

But there is also anger at the perceived lack of help, suspicion about what the government may be trying to hide and frustration that despite repeated claims from politicians that they speak “for the victims”, victims’ voices are not being heard.

“If the government feels the threat of terrorism is so great that it needs to introduce laws that severely compromise our civil liberties, why does it feel that it is not worth a public inquiry?” asks Kirsty Morrison. “Laws will not stop this from happening again. Understanding why it happened might just begin to.”