'I tried to call her back but her phone is going to voicemail. I am trying to stay as calm as I possibly can ...’

Cramer J Barnes & Catherine Shanahan in London

They are all there: the posters of the missing; the frantic relatives scouring the hospitals with photographs in their hands in search of news on loved ones; the wait for bodies, the slow dissipation of hope as time moves on.

The characters are fathers, brothers, sons, and daughters. Trevor Ellery travelled to London yesterday to search for his 21-year-old son, Richard. He has only recently been given the key to life, now he is missing after the bombing.

Richard texted his parents, Beverley and Trevor, at 8.30am on Thursday as he travelled from his home in Ipswich into Liverpool Street Station on his way to work in Jessops store, Kensington.

“Richard left his home in Ipswich for work in London yesterday morning, and we have not heard from him since around 8.30am. We are obviously extremely worried about our son. We have tried all means of getting in touch with Richard, and would welcome news from anyone who may have seen him or knows where he is,” a family statement read.

Mr Ellery, from Southampton, Hampshire, has travelled to London with his 19-year-old son Timothy and their local vicar.

He said: “We were both working when the incidents were spoken about by the media and didn’t think twice about it. Then both of us realised at the same time that Richard was in London.”

Carrying a photo of his son, Mr Ellery travelled to Liverpool Street Station and from there he planned to visit the local hospital where Richard would have been taken if injured.

Friends of another man missing feared dead on the Tavistock Place bomb bus later joined appeals for information about the whereabouts of victims.

Anthony Fataji Williams, 26, an executive with the Amoco oil company, is believed to have boarded a bus bound in the same direction as the number 30 after his usual Tube station was closed. His friend, Rajeet Sahni, aged 22, visited the scene of the blast to plead for information.

He said: “We know he was in the NW1 area at 8.41 when he boarded a bus heading towards Oxford Circus, but we haven’t heard from him since.

“The last trace of his mobile phone was at the same time and we know he was on a bus coming this way and would have been in this area when the explosion happened.”

He said that Mr Williams was British and his family are Nigerian and live in the African country.

Mr Sahni, who works in the fashion industry, said: “We’re just trying to find anyone who may have seen him in the area, or any of the survivors who may have seen him on the bus.

Nazmul Hasan said he was desperately trying to find his niece, Shahera Akther Islam, aged 20, from Plaistow, who went missing on Thursday as she used the Tube to go to her work at the Co-operative Bank.

Shahera Akther Islam left her home in Whitechapel on Wednesday morning to travel to her job as cashier in the Corporate Bank in Angel and has not been seen since. Yesterday, Nazmul, a 25-year-old actuary, was on a trawl of London’s hospitals, desperate for news of his niece.

“She would have been on the central line train, the one that exploded between Liverpool St and Aldgate St tube stations. She had a dental appointment which meant she should not have been travelling to work at all, but she switched the appointment to the afternoon.”

Shahera’s mother is distraught, as is Nazmul’s mother, the missing girl’s grandmother. “My family, as you can imagine, is going to pieces. We’ve checked out all of the hospitals and rang the hotline and nothing’s come up. No one’s had a wink of sleep for the past two nights. Shahera’s mother hasn’t stopped crying.

“I am hoping she is in hospital somewhere,” said Mr Hasan.

“Her mother and father have fallen to pieces over this. At 9.45am I received a call from her which I missed and I tried to call her back but her phone is going to voicemail. I am trying to stay as calm as I possibly can but you only have to see her mother and father to see the pain this has caused.”

Her family have now filed her as a missing person. Nazmul says his niece was a pretty girl, with long brown hair. He had no success when he visited the Royal London yesterday, the hospital in which his niece was born. His search continues.