Martine Wright, 50, no longer dwells on the question that often follows traumatic experiences: “Why me?” Why did she have to be on the train during the fateful July day in 2005? Why did her family have to suffer not knowing her whereabouts during the 7/7 London bombings? And why did she have to lose both her legs in the terrorist attack?
“For many years, I would ask myself, ‘Why me?'” she says. “But I’ve moved past that question now.” It has been a long and painful journey for Wright to reach this point. She went from being rescued from the tube tunnel with such severe injuries that she couldn’t be identified, to representing Britain in wheelchair volleyball at the Paralympics, and now working as a motivational speaker and charity ambassador. “People always wonder what the turning point was,” she says, “but there were many turning points.”
When Wright and I connect over Zoom, it is three days after the 18th anniversary of the bombings. She is at her home in Hertfordshire, where she lives with her husband, Nick, and their son, Oscar, who was born four years after the attack and is considered her “miracle” baby.
For many years, the anniversary of 7 July was difficult for her. “I would have to escape, maybe go on vacation,” she says. “I couldn’t turn on the TV. Now, I don’t need to do that, but I still find myself looking at the clock at 8:50 am.”
It was around this time that three of the four suicide bombers detonated their devices near Aldgate, Edgware Road, and Russell Square stations. Wright, who was 32 at the time and working as an international marketing manager, was on the Circle line, just a few feet away from the Aldgate bomber. It wasn’t her usual train.
“I never took the Circle line because you always have to wait a long time for it,” she explains. “But that morning, I reached Old Street and there was a signal failure.”
The day before, on 6 July, it was announced that London had won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics. Wright, who was working at media company CNET at the time, went out to celebrate with colleagues. The following morning, on 7 July, she overslept and was running late.
“I thought to myself, ‘What should I do? Should I get off at Old Street and find a bus? Or should I stay on the train?’ It was a real ‘sliding doors’ moment.” She decided to stay on the train, switching to the Circle line at Moorgate. “I was reading my newspaper, all about London 2012. As a proud Londoner, I was thinking, ‘This is going to be huge!’ I remember going into that tunnel, thinking, ‘I need to get tickets.’ And then it happened.”
Wright doesn’t recall the explosion, only a white flash and being shaken. “And suddenly, we were in this environment that didn’t look like the tube. You couldn’t see anything. It was all black, with the smell of electrical burning and people screaming.”
The train had been torn apart, with a crater where the bomber had been sitting. The seats were no longer lined up. “I was fortunate. The impact of the bomb had spun me around 90 degrees, so I couldn’t see what was happening behind me. And that’s where everyone else was. Dying, behind me. It took me a while to realize what had happened. I thought we had been in a crash.”
She doesn’t remember the pain, but she does remember the people. She recalls a man named Andrew Brown talking to her. He had been sitting next to her but was now behind her after the crash, being electrocuted by wires. At her feet was Kira Mason, crying out in pain. Mason had lost her arm.
And then there was her “guardian angel,” Elizabeth Kenworthy, an off-duty police officer who was two carriages away. “While everyone was being evacuated, she made her way toward the danger, like many others did that day. She saw the condition of my legs and asked fellow passengers for belts and cardigans to create tourniquets. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for her because the doctors told me I had lost 80% of my blood.”