It wasn’t all bad

A pensioner who was targeted by scammers has been reunited with his life savings, thanks to the intervention of a taxi driver. Barry Stone, a retired cabinet maker from Marlow, received a call from someone who claimed to be investigating bank fraud for Scotland Yard. They told the 78-year-old to withdraw £12,000 and hand the cash to a driver, who would take the notes to London so they could be checked for fingerprints. But the cabbie, Izy Rashid, quickly smelled a rat, and returned the notes. “I’m very, very relieved,” Mr Stone said.

A survivor of the Grenfell Tower fire who feared her cat had died in the disaster has been reunited with her beloved pet. When Kerry O’hara, 53, discovered that the building was ablaze, she only had time to grab her keys and a jacket before fleeing her sixth-floor flat. She fought her way through thick smoke down to the second floor, where she was rescued by a firefighter. Her cat, Rosey, was left behind.

In the days after the fire, O’hara repeatedly returned to the area to put up “missing” posters and ask if anyone had seen Rosey – but she eventually gave up hope that the cat had survived the fire. Then, in August, two months after the disaster, Rosey was spotted less than half a mile from Grenfell Tower; she was taken to a vet, who found her old address by scanning her microchip. “I got a phone call from someone saying we think we’ve found your cat,” said O’hara. “I was asking, is she OK, is she burnt? But she just had a scratch on her nose. She recognised me straight away. Now I don’t let her out of my sight.”