The phone started beeping and ringing as soon as I got on the train back to London. I turned to my husband, whom I had married 48 hours earlier in Norwich Cathedral. He was smiling, looking out of the train window at the spring sunshine. Next to him was a pile of wedding presents that we had spent the morning unwrapping at my parents’ house. Both of us were still on a huge high after our wedding day, the beautiful service and the celebrations with over a hundred family and friends. I knew before I picked up the phone what the messages would be about. “Verdict coming.” “It’s time.” The honeymoon bliss would have to be put on hold.

“I’m really sorry, darling,” I said, “I need to take these calls. It’s the Operation Crevice trial verdict. It’s finally happening.”

He looked at me. Now? The timing was awful. But he knew how long, and how much I and the other 7/7 survivors and families had been waiting for this.

“Good luck, honey.” We kissed, and then I walked to a quiet part of the train and started to take the calls from the media. All of them wanted to know the same thing: what was my reaction to the news that the London bombers had been tailed a year before the bombings – but not stopped?

For over a year, I and other survivors and bereaved families had kept quiet about what we had gradually found out about the links between the July 7 bombers and the men who had just been found guilty of planning huge fertiliser bomb attacks at Bluewater shopping centre in Kent and the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London. Operation Crevice was a brilliant result for the security services and police, averting the loss of hundreds of innocent lives. British terrorists planning appalling bomb attacks had been captured after a massive surveillance operation.

But the success of Operation Crevice masked a dramatic secret: the security services had followed 7/7 bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shezhad Tanweer as they associated with the fertiliser bomb plotters. Khan had attended terrorist training camps abroad with them and engaged in criminal activity to raise money to support jihad.

Khan and Omar Khyam, the leader of the fertiliser plotters, had used antisurveillance techniques as they drove about together. For months in 2004 they had been taped and photographed – but the 7/7 men had somehow slipped the net. And they had gone on to murder 52 people and injure almost 800 more in Britain’s worst terrorist attack – a year later. Perhaps July 7, 2005 was the postCrevice Plan B? Did Khan decide to use suicide bomb tactics because of the failure of Khyam’s giant fertiliser bomb plot?

What the other survivors and I were most concerned about was whether the public was any safer since the bombings of July 7 2005. The more we discovered the more suspicious we became because what we had been told originally just didn’t check out.

In the days after 7/7 Charles Clarke, the then home secretary, told the public that the bombers were “clean skins”. That they had come out of the blue, unnoticed, unstop-pable. He said that he had not ruled out an inquiry into the bombings that had killed 26 people standing behind me in my Tube carriage.

Then, in December 2005, I wanted to weep when Tony Blair ruled out an inquiry into the bombings. His arguing that an inquiry would “take too long, cost too much and only tell us what we already know” seemed crazy: the US had managed to hold the 9/11 commission (the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) while fighting the war on terror in Iraq and elsewhere. It had not taken years, it had not cost billions. The commission’s report became a US bestseller. Surely, I thought, the British public deserved to know the facts about the first home-grown suicide bombing on western soil?

The home secretary had promised only an “official narrative” about what had happened but it was not “what” so much as “why” and “how” the bombings had happened that haunted the victims. We then heard that the Intelligence and Securities Committee (ISC) would investigate the work of M15. I trusted (naively) that this committee of MPs would ask searching questions and that all the evidence would be presented and evaluated, particularly concerning communications between the police and the security services. I know now, that did not happen.

As time passed, I wrote about my struggle to understand the suicide bombings on my website diary. Other survivors and bereaved families began to contact me. Their stories were heartbreaking. There was a real sense of disbelief at the decision not to have an inquiry into the bombings. There was frustration at how reliant we were on leaks and stories in the media to get information.

After hearing those who had lost loved ones or been injured, I promised that I would do what I could in my small way as a blogger to keep the issue alive. After all, I had my health and my life. I had not been able to help people on the day, but I could use my writing and my campaigning skills to try and help now. It helped to assuage the survivor guilt that I still felt; the strange traumatised shame of being left alive when so many people in my Tube carriage had died.

I tried to find out what I could, to fill in the gaps in the official accounts. For still we survivors had no answers. And we did not think anyone was any safer than on July 7, and that was hard to live with.

Despite my suspicions I knew that something was truly not right when I attended a private meeting for survivors at the Home Office in spring 2006. A senior police officer told us that Khan’s details had come up as having “links to international terrorism” – within 48 hours of the bombs exploding. How could this be, if the bombers’ ringleader had never been on the radar before? I started digging, and I met with other survivors and bereaved families. We shared what information we could glean and the more I found out, the more sick I felt. We were simply not being told the truth.

By the time the Crevice trial jury retired in March 2007, an online group had sprung up, where survivors and bereaved families privately discussed what we could do to beg the government for an inquiry, now that reporting restrictions were about to be lifted. People who had shunned the media since 7/7 were feeling sufficiently angry and upset to speak out.

We wanted an impartial, honest inquiry, chaired by someone independent of government and the security services. An inquiry which had the power to cross-examine wit-nesses and compel evidence, that could talk to all the stakeholders and agencies involved in 7/7, and make recommendations. Above all, it would reassure the public that lessons had been learnt that we would all be safer in the future.

We drafted a letter, ready to take to the home secretary as soon as the Crevice verdict was given, asking for an impartial and independent inquiry. Then we waited. The verdict took weeks to come. As my wedding approached, I often found myself in tears, selfishly wishing I had not promised to help. I chewed my cheek until it bled, worrying we would be misrepresented as traumatised obsessives trying to blame the security services. I had shuddering breathless panic attacks about whether I would let people down when asked to speak on their behalf.

I couldn’t sleep, anxious about whether the public would understand why we needed an inquiry. I was also feeling guilty about the effect this was having on my fiancé and family and social life. As a bride-to-be I wanted to focus on the happy details of my imminent wedding. Flowers and silk dress-es, celebrations and champagne, my love for my fiancé – not the political row brewing.

It was hard when people asked me if I felt stressed planning the wedding. No, I wanted to say, the wedding planning fills me with joy. Only I don’t have any time to enjoy it. I spend eight hours a day being asked about terrorism and death instead. And I hate what it is doing to me.

The day before the wedding I was nervous, not about walking down the aisle but about the news coming the following week. The wedding went ahead last Saturday. It was the most wonderful day of my life and of course I did not think of terrorism or responsibilities all day. I walked about in a haze of love and happiness, and the only tears I cried were tears of joy.

But from the moment I started taking those calls on the train I could feel myself change from blissed-out bride to a political campaigner, ready to speak out. My jaw tightened, my posture changed, as the wedding dreaminess faded and reality rushed back in.

I talked to Sky TV live as the train hurtled through a tunnel, did some phone interviews hiding in the train loo, arrived at Liver-pool Street station, caught a cab home and was carried over the threshold into our flat by my husband – as a new bride should be. Then I threw on a suit and set off for a frantic round of interviews – I lost track. I rushed to a park for an ITN news special, then to Channel 4 News for a live interview. Jon Snow, who had interviewed me before, remarked that I looked well. I told him marriage was agreeing with me. The day flew past and I realised I had not eaten: it was 8.30pm.

Outside, I caught up with how others from our group had done. Brilliantly. More calls came in. Would I do a live panel discussion on Newsnight? I had already recorded an interview for them, but yes, okay. Then more calls: would I do BBC Breakfast the next day? Argh, that meant only a few hours’ sleep. But I would be able to catch up with Danny Biddle, the most seriously injured of all the 7/7 survivors, who was also on BBC Breakfast. Danny had lost both legs, an eye, a spleen, been burnt and almost died several times when Khan exploded his bomb opposite him. He was supporting the calls for an inquiry. His story of survival was staggering, his courage immense. Danny’s example was part of my motiva-tion to do all I could for the inquiry campaign.

By Newsnight I realised there was a big row brewing about whether the July 7 bombers’ names had been known to MI5 before the event. It was starting to look as if the ISC had either not asked the right questions, or had not been shown all the evidence, including photos of the bombers talking to the Crevice plotters taken by police. And now we were supposed to trust this handpicked committee of MPs who were appointed by the prime minister, with no independent investigator or investigative powers, and few resources of its own, to go through all the evidence again?

The following day at the Home Office we handed in a letter asking for a proper inquiry. Then I left for my honeymoon. Meanwhile David Cameron tackled Tony Blair in the House of Commons about the need for a proper inquiry as pressure mounted about the apparent insufficiencies of the ISC report.

But as I write this, the prime minister remains adamant that a full inquiry would divert resources and undermine M15. Last Thursday he told the Commons: “The fact is the ISC went into all of these issues in immense detail.”

Five days after the verdict came back in the Crevice trial, both opposition parties have joined our calls for the truth about 7/7 to be revealed. It took four years to get the 9/11 commission report, after many rebuffs from the US administration. Perhaps it will not take us as long. We are a group of determined people. We have legal advice, and we have time on our side. Soon Blair will go. We will see what happens after that.

I am tired, but pleased, as I write this, at sunrise from my honeymoon hotel, that the story is still running. I am so damn proud of what the group has achieved in raising the issue. And I know, having been inspired by them all year, just how strong these people can be.

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