What started as a nanny job became a second family for Louise Rayner after the 9/11 attacks killed the father of the children she was caring for in New Jersey.

Rayner, from Bradford, was in her mid-20s and living with the Lawrence family in Summit, New Jersey, on 11 September 2001. She was working as a nanny for Bob and Suzanne Lawrence’s two children.

Bob Lawrence, 41, was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, one day after starting a new job on the 104th floor of the South Tower.

Rayner stayed with the family for another two and a half years to help after his death, and she said the bond they formed has lasted ever since.

Speaking to the BBC on the 25th anniversary of the attacks, the 52-year-old said 9/11 changed the “whole direction of my life” and gave her a second home in the US.

She met the family by chance after changing her original flight to the US by two weeks. On the plane, she met another au pair who introduced her to Bob, Suzanne and their children, Bobby and Toland.

The couple sponsored Rayner to study while she worked as their nanny.

“Toland was about eight and Bobby was six, I got on really well with them and they were really cute and lovely.

“A lot of Bob’s family lived in Summit, so there was loads of cousins and it never felt like a job.”

On the morning of the attacks, Suzanne was away for work and Bob had left early to get a lift into New York, where he worked for an investment bank in the South Tower.

“I had taken the kids to school and hadn’t seen Bob as he left so early and I went back to bed, and I remember the landline went and started ringing and ringing.

“It was a nanny friend who lived two towns over and she said, ‘are you watching the news?’,” Louise recalled.

“It had been such a beautiful, perfect morning with clear skies and what unfolded was so surreal.

“We were watching it together live and I was talking to her as the second plane hit.

“And then my mobile started to ring.”

Rayner said some of Bob’s family did not know he had taken a new job at the World Trade Center. Suzanne, who was in another state, could not fly home because aircraft were grounded, so Rayner picked the children up from school.

For weeks, she said, there was a lot of “clinging to hope” that missing people would be found, but it was understood that anyone on or above the 77th floor of the South Tower had died. The plane hit the building between the 78th and 84th floors.

“And of course, no one expected the towers to fall, the skyline, it was like a child losing its tooth, it was just so stark to see it.

“Everyone was presumed dead.

“I tried to just be a stable presence for the children, but I don’t think it was officially confirmed for a long time that Bob had died,” she said.

Rayner said the period that followed felt like “tiptoeing through someone else’s grave” as the family dealt with the loss of Bob, who she described as “bigger than life” and an “incredible family man”.

“But I wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t even need to say it, Suzanne and the family needed me,” she said.

Suzanne, who worked in finance, returned to work shortly afterwards. Rayner said she spent the next two and a half years helping with cooking, cleaning and homework, and keeping Bob’s family updated about the children.

“I just knew that they were grateful for that,” she said.

Rayner left New Jersey in 2003 when her visa expired, but said her friendship with the Lawrences remained strong despite the more than 3,000 miles between Baildon and New York.

She said Suzanne, who is “so strong but not overly sentimental”, later sent her an engraved miniature picture frame, thanking her for being there when she was needed.

Rayner said she is especially close to Toland, now in her 30s.

“She says to me ‘you were meant to be there, it wasn’t just anybody…it was you that was meant to be there you were sent to help’.

“She is right, if I had gone on that original flight I would never have met the girl who introduced me, so there’s all these ripples, all these like sliding doors moments that led us to that and I so feel so close to them even now,” Rayner said.

Suzanne, Bobby and Toland have visited Bradford, and Toland was Rayner’s bridesmaid when she married. Rayner said her own three children, aged 19, 17 and 14, have also met the Lawrences in New York, which was “two worlds coming together”.

“9/11 absolutely changed the course of my life, it gave me these friendships with the family with two close friends who were there with me when it happened, we share it.

“So much kindness came out of it, such a sharp contrast to what happened.

“I’ve got this family in New Jersey that wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for 9/11.”

Read more from BBC News.