By Tom Geoghegan BBC News

Gladys: Always cheerful, always smiling

Twelve months after Gladys Wundowa died from injuries sustained on the bus blast in Tavistock Square, her husband Emmanuel is struggling to make sense of events.

A glance around Emmanuel Wundowa's living room in Chadwell Heath, east London, tells a story in itself.

A huge mounted photograph of his wife Gladys radiates a beaming smile and a watchful eye on a family trying to cope with the huge void she has left behind.

A year after her death, the loss to her husband and their two children, Azuma, 17, and Zakari, 14, is felt as deeply as ever.

"It's getting worse," said Emmanuel, 53. "Now it's coming to the one-year, all the memories of the seventh are beginning to resurface.

"But I've said to the children: 'Do not harbour hatred.' Do that and we can continue to live our lives the way she would have wanted us.

"If we harbour hatred, it will eat into us and we will end up as more victims of the same atrocity."

After 25 years in the UK, Ghana was still home

Emmanuel and Gladys were both born and educated in Ghana but they met in London in 1986 through a mutual friend.

They had decided they wanted to return to their homeland in a few years and Emmanuel, an architect, had designed a house which was in the process of being built in Accra for a happy retirement with the woman he loved.

"Gladys was a simple, straightforward woman, very, very selfless.

"She made friends and she would go out of her way and do things for people, even though she had so much to do. She would give up her work, just to help.

"She never had a problem with anyone. She would give her last dime to make you comfortable. And cheerful, always smiling."

Her working day was long, leaving at 3am and on some days not returning until 7.30pm, which meant she and Emmanuel, working nights as a security guard, saw little of each other on some days.

They were both sending money back to their families, conscious that they had more than them.

Student and volunteer

Gladys, 50, had been a cleaner at University College London for 18 years, and she also did volunteer work at a charity in Hackney which helped black immigrants to settle in their new country.

Although originally a Methodist, Emmanuel introduced her to Downs Baptist Church in Hackney where she became heavily involved in church events. And on top of that, she was studying on a housing management course.

On the morning of her death, after finishing work at the university's civil engineering department in Bloomsbury, she was making her way to Shoreditch for a meeting about her course.

If we harbour hatred, it will eat into us and we will end up as more victims of the same atrocity Emmanuel Wundowa Obituary: Gladys Wundowa

She took the Number 30 bus but among the passengers was Hasib Hussain, an 18-year-old student from Leeds, who blew up himself and the bus at 9.47am.

It later transpired that she emerged from the wreckage but died 25 minutes later from her injuries, being attended to on the pavement by paramedics. That night, Emmanuel was beside himself with worry when she failed to return.

"For three days, I went to all the hospitals she possibly could have been sent to. I drove to every hospital, as far as St George's in Tooting.

"For three days and three nights, nothing. Then I told the children 'Let's give up hope she's alive, she's dead.'"

Presidential visit

Gladys's relatives in Ghana, especially her frail 76-year-old mother, were constantly ringing for news, and those days of uncertainty caused mental torture.

"I can't find words to describe how I felt but maybe 'terrible' is the only word," said Emmanuel.

One source of strength was the number of friends, mostly from the Church, who filled the house and garden. Among them was Ghana's President, John Kufuor, during a visit to the UK.

Gladys had always intended to be buried in her home village, and after a London memorial service, her body was flown to Accra, then driven 140km to Avenui-Awudome in the Volta region.

Charity, church and family were the important things in Gladys's life

Two thousand mourners witnessed her burial before Emmanuel took some of her personal belongings 900km away to his village, Nalerigu in the north, for another service.

The �18,000 cost was a heavy one, not helped by the fact that he has not received a penny from the Criminal Injuries Board. He says the explanation given to him is they are checking if he has a criminal record in Ghana - he says he does not - but the Home Office said it would not comment on the case.

This is one of many frustrations Emmanuel harbours over the handling of the aftermath of the bombings.

He also knows little about his wife's final few minutes, because the police mistakenly said they could not put him in touch with the paramedics.

"If they told me who helped her, then they could tell me something. That drives me crazy."

The image of Gladys dominates the living room

This week the London Ambulance Service said it would be happy to arrange a meeting between him and the medics.

Emmanuel is also angry about the delay in formally identifying the body, which he says was two weeks, as he fielded long-distance, anxious phone calls. But the police say all the bodies were identified within 10 days, after staff worked round the clock.

These are the kinds of issues Emmanuel would like addressed by a public inquiry, so that others "do not have go through hell".

"The rest of the country is being told the services did a marvellous job. Yes they did, but there are many things to learn. Confronted with the problem, some people panicked and lost the sense of doing things clearly."

On the 7 July anniversary, Emmanuel will attend several of the events organised for relatives, but a more personal tribute has been arranged by University College London - a tree planted in her memory.

Emmanuel has also launched a memorial fund to raise money for a medical clinic in Gladys's village.

And although the house he was to share with her is to be given to her sisters, he still intends to move back and make a new home in Ghana.