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That instant it dawned on me the end was near occurred in my 20s, at a time when everything was beginning. My best friend, Helen, and I were headed to Blackburn to reunite with a former classmate who had recently moved there for work. Delighted to be together, and enjoying the thought of the party weekend ahead, we talked incessantly as we traveled by train from York.

We placed our luggage – full of essentials such as our favorite wines and my brand-new black clogs – in the storage compartment and made ourselves comfortable in a cosy two-seater. Roughly halfway through our journey, I was vaguely conscious of a bang. This was followed by a second, this time impossible to ignore. A woman screamed as our carriage was lifted off the tracks in what felt like a delayed sequence. In an instant, Helen and I were upright in the middle of the aisle, hugging each other. Head down, eyelids tightly closed, I waited for the carriage to flip and explode, like in the movies. My thoughts turned to our relatives and companions receiving the notification. Then I heard the child sobbing.

“It's going to be fine,” I murmured, my tone was hoarse. “It's finished now,” I stated, mostly for my own benefit.

She appeared to be seven or eight, and seemed to be entirely alone. Her sobbing snapped me back to reality; this was my opportunity to be useful. I moved to where she was standing and put my arm around her. “Avoid looking back,” Helen shouted, the warning came after the fact. I saw a man with blood all over his face. A large metallic item had crashed through the window behind us. Afterward, we learned a driverless construction vehicle had descended the slope and into the side of the train, leading to the derailment.

Our car was lodged with its nose pointing upward. Following that came of sirens and a fellow passenger asked me to hand the child over so he could help her out the window, as kids were being rescued to fire crews on standby. A few minutes later, Helen and I were also climbing out of the train window and descending via a ladder down to the rails.

Standing on firm land again – beside a freight warehouse in Pudsey – my body started to shake uncontrollably. My eyes scanned for the little girl and observed her being embraced by her mother, who it turned out had been using the restroom when the crash occurred. An emergency worker helpfully fetched my clogs. A fellow passenger sat down heavily on Helen’s case, resulting in it breaking open – however, fortunately our wine remained intact. After a half-hour wait, we traveled in a free cab to Blackburn, with a teenage boy and the lady who had broken Helen’s case. Our host was there, ashen-faced. She was aware there had been a derailment and a staff member had led her away and offered her a hot drink while she waited for news.

Bolstered by youthful resilience, we set the accident aside and proceeded with the social outing, which featured a notable act by Blackburn drag queen Clitheroe Kate. There were no fatalities in the incident, despite the fact that several people required hospital treatment. Helen and I escaped with bruises and aches and pains from the impact of being thrown forward in the carriage. Our speed had been decreasing to enter Leeds station, which had been the primary reason in preventing major harm. Given that nobody was badly hurt helped not to focus on the “what ifs” but that young girl who left a lasting impact on me. Attending to her and calming her down shifted my focus outward and demonstrated the worth of looking outwards in a crisis. As time passed, I have often wondered if she had any memory of the event, and how big a deal it had been for her.

Helen and I have stayed close for thirty-plus years and "Pudsey" is now our code word for our capacity to handle any situation, so long as we are together. Being with her that day created the sensation that I was shielded against the full horror of the event. The derailment further transformed the way I approach various difficult situations, giving me perspective – and reinforcing the idea that, however bad things seem, it remains a gift to age.