When Gill Hicks takes to the stage, she says with a small laugh that she hopes she can get through just the opening number, “without breaking down in a heap”. It will be emotional. Wryly titled Still Alive (and Kicking), the show is Hicks’s own way to mark the 20th anniversary of the suicide bombings on London’s public transport that killed 52 people, and injured more than 700 – Hicks, a survivor, lost both her legs. In her show, she weaves her story of survival and resilience around singing the jazz standards she has always loved.
She has already performed a version of it in Australia, where she now lives, but for its London outing she hopes around 20 members of the medical and emergency teams who attended that day will be in the audience. “They are extraordinary,” she says, “and their actions not only saved my life that morning, but I honestly believe they have saved me every single day since.”
That July morning, Hicks was on her way to work when one of the four suicide bombers who targeted London detonated his bomb in her tube carriage, somewhere between King’s Cross and Russell Square. Hicks is believed to have been the last survivor pulled from the wreckage some 40 minutes later, her injuries so bad that when she arrived at hospital she was simply labelled: “One unknown, estimated female”.
Before that, lying in the dark smoke-filled carriage, having used her scarf as a tourniquet around what was left of her legs to stop the bleeding, Hicks remembers making what she describes as a contract. She would get the chance to live, and she would make it count. “That’s really helped me continue to get up every day regardless of the situation I’m in. There’s a purpose and an absolute sense that there’s things to be done that help remind us of our shared humanity.”
She had lived in London for more than 20 years, working in architecture and design, then after the bombings dedicating her time to organisations that promoted peace, before moving to Australia in 2013, the same year she had her daughter. The last time Hicks came to London was in 2015 to commemorate 10 years since the bombings. But she doesn’t associate the city with trauma. That has been a conscious choice, she says. “That’s the one power that we all have, to be able to choose how we react and how we respond. Part of the honour of life for me is constantly choosing to live from a place of gratitude and positivity.”
Twenty years, she says, is long enough to consider the depth of the impact on her. “With the nature of my disability, I’m never detached from what’s happened,” she says. Forgiveness hasn’t felt necessary, or even possible given the man who blew up that tube carriage died in the blast, “so he’s taken away this exchange. It’s also made me feel I don’t have to really consider my feelings about him. I have to instead focus on what I do with my life, and how do I honour my life?” She is also always aware of those who didn’t come home that day.
The idea of “healing” or “recovery” is difficult – “My legs won’t grow back. I live in quite a lot of constant pain” – but for Hicks, the arts have been part of reclaiming her sense of self. She was a jazz musician before the bombings, but she never thought she would be able to sing or perform again. Her injuries left her with hearing loss, and one functioning lung. “It took me months to learn how to speak again,” she says. “When something like this type of life-altering event happens, it’s so easy to lose yourself, because your identity is skewed. Suddenly you’re a disabled person, so that’s one label. You’re a double amputee, that’s another. You’re a survivor, or are you a victim? I’ve been given a new life, but it’s this constant struggle of how do I do this?” The arts, including her vibrant paintings (which will be projected during the show) and working with the violinist Julian Ferraretto (also part of the show) represented “this beautiful piece of life before, that came back but with a different meaning, so it’s actually more powerful”.
Instead of thinking about the hate and extremism of that catastrophic moment, Hicks prefers to focus on the love and compassion she was shown in the months and years afterwards. She tracked down as many people involved in her care as she could, “to look into their eyes and say thank you.” Several, including one of the first paramedics who entered Hicks’s carriage, have become close friends.
This is what she wants her show to bring to people. “Through the addition of music, it becomes a real celebration of not only life, but of who we are as human beings – the extraordinary, unconditional love that I was shown as a person without identity, ‘One unknown, estimated female.’ To think that my body wasn’t just passed from one person to the next, it was absolutely held with love and intention for survival. Who I am today is because of how powerful that love and care was on that morning. I think the undercurrent for me of 20 years is: how do I tell that? How do I be the reminder?”