A young, talented Italian woman telephoned her mother to say her goodbyes as her flat was engulfed in the Grenfell Tower blaze.
Gloria Trevisan and her boyfriend, Marco Gottardi, both architects from the Veneto region of northern Italy, are missing and feared dead by their families.
The two lived on the 23rd floor of the 24-storey tower block that went up in flames.After the fire broke out, Trevisan immediately called her parents, who began recording all her subsequent calls.
"These are terrible, agonising calls," said Maria Cristina Sandri, the lawyer for Trevisan's family, who said she cried as she listened to the audio files with the parents late this week.According to Italian media accounts, the 26-year-old architect first called in the evening telling her parents there was a fire on the third floor, but both she and her parents seemed certain that firefighters would have extinguished the fire before it got anywhere near her apartment on the 23rd floor.
At 2am, she was more frantic. Trevisan's mother asked to speak with Trevisan's boyfriend, Gottardi, who tried to calm both his girlfriend and her parents, saying: "The firefighters are here, everything is OK."
When Trevisan called again at about 3am in Italy, her parents had turned on the television in their home near Padua and were watching a live broadcast of the tower in flames as they spoke with their daughter on the phone.
"We can't get out, we are blocked," Trevisan told them.
The last call came as smoke was pouring into the apartment.
"I am so sorry I can never hug you again. I had my whole life ahead of me. It's not fair. I don't want to die. I wanted to help you, to thank you for all you did for me," La Repubblica reported Trevisan as saying. "I am about to go to heaven, I will help you from there."
Gottardi told his father at round 2am UK time: "There's a lot of smoke, but don't worry, we're waiting for the rescuers. We opened the front door, but there was too much smoke to be able to leave. The lifts are blocked."
His father, Giannino, told the Italian press: "In the first call they told us to be calm, that everything was under control. But in the second call — and I cannot get this out of my head — he told me that there was smoke, that a lot of smoke was rising up.
"There's nothing more we can do [but] wait for a miracle."
After graduating with high marks in architecture, the couple had moved to London last March after Trevisan could not find work in Italy that paid enough. In London, she found a job that paid ₤1,800 (about R29,500) a month and was happily embarking on her new career.'Grenfell Tower burnt! Very bad tower, very bad quality'
A six-year-old girl whose mother battled thick smoke to carry her down 19 floors to safety has drawn a heartbreaking picture of the burning Grenfell Tower as she tries to come to terms with the tragedy.
The drawing by Yohana Yohannes, who has barely slept since the blaze, depicts her home engulfed by flames and several residents at the windows.
She wrote: "Grenfell Tower burnt! Very bad tower and very bad quality. Watch the news to see more."
Yohannes Tesfaye, her father, said: "I encouraged it. I think it helps."
Meron Mekonnen, 36, her mother, described the moment they ran to safety, revealing that as they made their way from the top of the tower, 10 of her neighbours retreated back upstairs, too scared to plough on.
Those who returned to their apartments have not been seen since...