OF ALL the agonies that an outrage creates, the worst is not knowing. It is almost beyond that of loss and grows in the silence of an unanswered telephone.

Jamie Gordon last made contact with the world at 9.42am on Thursday when he phoned workmates to say that he was catching the bus that went to Tavistock Square. Yesterday, Yvonne Nash, his distraught girlfriend of seven years, sat outside King’s Cross station clutching a photograph of the couple together.

Every hour that passes bolsters the awful likelihood that Jamie was on the No 30 bus that was ripped apart by a terrorist bomb. Yvonne has combed London’s hospitals to no avail. News of his fate, however bad, would at least help to channel his partner’s sorrow.

Yvonne is only one of many left in the limbo of uncertainty. Relatives and friends of the missing from four bomb blasts have been contacting hospitals and authorities, putting up posters and handing out photographs across the capital.

Desperate friends did the same in New York after September 11. Some were found safe and well, but all too often the news was the worst.

The mobile phone that Yvonne is desperate for Jamie to answer was found in the wreckage in Tavistock Square. Yet the slender hope remains that he may be alive somewhere, even if injured and without means of identification. She will cling to that until she hears otherwise.

Yvonne, who is being comforted by friends at the couple’s home in Enfield, North London, spoke for all who wait in fading hope. “I just have to find him. I have to know what happened. You cannot sleep, cannot eat, when you are that worried about somebody.”

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