Humdrum of daily life returns — but fear lies beneath

THERE’S a string of billboards on the wall of the Tube station on Tottenham Court Road.

One is an advertisement for a horror film called The Descent, which tells the story of a caving expedition that goes horribly wrong. The film seeks to capitalise on people's fear of being trapped underground. On Thursday in London, commuters on the Tube experienced that terror for real. Many did not get out.

At last count yesterday, the death toll had reached 49. Thirteen of those people had been killed in the bus explosion at Tavistock Square. The explosions on the three Underground stations had claimed the others. But the Metropolitan Police could not say for sure how many had died. The reason was simple: firefighters and medical crews had focused on getting those who were still alive out of the wreckage of the trains. The dead they had temporarily left behind.

The retrieval efforts began yesterday. But nothing was happening fast, given that nobody knew how stable the sections of the Underground affected were. The site of the second blast, which occurred on a train between King's Cross and Russell Square killing at least 21 people, proved particularly problematic.

"The complexity of getting to the carriage is one of safety," said the Met's Assistant Commissioner of Specialist Operations, Andy Hayman, of the retrieval effort. "Just imagine an explosion that far into a tunnel I think we can all respect the sort of things our people are actually confronting."

The sites affected form just a small area of the city's vast Underground network, which carries an average of three million passengers a day. Services on just a handful of lines were cancelled yesterday as a result of the terrorist attacks. The rest were fully operational and busy. Tottenham Court Road station is just a few minutes' walk from the general area affected by the terrorist attacks. Yet citizens did not seem deterred. Neither did the busker. As people made their way down the elevators towards the various lines, they were met by the sounds of his electric guitar. Upbeat numbers seemed the order of the day.

On the Central line, which runs through Marble Arch and Notting Hill and out towards Ealing, commuters seemed unperturbed. A student in a green T-shirt bearing the logo "To Want, To Need, To Be" put his head against a window pane and slept. A woman in her 20s wrote in a diary, while a businessman a couple of seats down read a morning paper. The humdrum of daily life.

The scenes are similar on other lines. An elderly woman with grey hair in a bun reads a missal on the District line, which runs under Westminster.

But she doesn't seem to be reaching for prayer to get her through the journey; in fact, she's the picture of serenity, and after a few minutes, she, too, falls asleep. Another woman, in her 40s and dressed casually in jeans and cardigan, stands and flicks through the pages of a James Patterson thriller, a bag of shopping at her feet. A father boards the train with his two young sons, who punch each other playfully in between swigging from bottles of Fanta.

But if it all seems normal enough, one can't quite escape from the events of the previous day. Announcements on the train warn passengers to ensure they bring all their belongings with them, "because this will stop unnecessary security alerts". Other announcements ask passengers to "report anything suspicious to a member of staff".

But of course, while both the staff and police presence has been beefed up in the stations, there's no one really to report to on the trains themselves. And as each train departs the lights of the station and races into the darkness, passing oncoming trains in a blur of speed and sound, one can't help but wonder just what would happen if something went wrong.

And then, the thought is so horrific, that you do your best to dismiss it almost as quickly, and just be thankful that it wasn't you.