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That instant it dawned on me I was about to die arrived during my 20s, as my adult life was unfolding. My dearest friend, Helen, and I were headed to Blackburn to visit an old university friend who had recently moved there for work. Overjoyed at the reunion, and enjoying the thought of the social gathering to come, we talked incessantly as we traveled by train from York.

We put our suitcases – full of essentials such as wine bottles and the clogs I had just bought – in the storage compartment and made ourselves comfortable in a snug pair of seats. Roughly halfway through our journey, I was dimly aware of a bang. This was followed by a second, this time impossible to ignore. A female passenger shrieked as our carriage was thrown up into the air in what felt like a delayed sequence. In an instant, Helen and I were upright in the middle of the aisle, holding each other tight. Looking down, eyes screwed shut, I expected the carriage to flip and explode, as I’d seen in films. I recall pondering our families and friends receiving the notification. Then I heard the young girl weeping.

“It's going to be fine,” I said softly, speaking with a rasp. “The worst has passed,” I whispered, mostly for my own benefit.

Her age was roughly seven or eight, and appeared to be completely on her own. Her crying shook me out of my trance; now I could do something meaningful. I made my way to where she was standing and put my arm around her. “Avoid looking back,” Helen yelled, the warning came after the fact. I glimpsed a man whose face was bloody. An enormous piece of metal had penetrated the window behind us. Later, we learned a uncontrolled excavator had rolled down the hill and collided with the train, leading to the derailment.

Our carriage was stuck with its front end in the air. Following that came of sirens and a man nearby requested that I to hand the child over so he could pass her through the window, as kids were being rescued to fire crews on standby. Shortly after, Helen and I were similarly exiting of the train window and climbing down a ladder on to the track.

Once back on solid ground – next to a goods shed in Pudsey – uncontrollable shivers took over. I looked for the little girl and observed her being embraced by her mother, we later learned had been using the restroom at the time of the accident. A rescuer graciously recovered my clogs. Another traveler plonked down on Helen’s case, making it split apart – but, by good fortune our wine was unharmed. Once we had waited for thirty minutes, we made our way in a provided car to Blackburn, with a teenage boy and the female passenger who had broken Helen’s case. Our university friend greeted us, visibly shaken. She had heard there had been a derailment and a railway official had escorted her to an office and offered her a hot drink while she waited for news.

Displaying the fearlessness of young adulthood, we set the accident aside and proceeded with the social outing, which featured a unforgettable performance by Blackburn drag queen Clitheroe Kate. Not a single life was lost in the incident, despite the fact that several people required hospital treatment. Helen and I got away with bruises and soreness and discomfort from the violent forward motion in the carriage. Our speed had been decreasing to come into Leeds station, which had been the primary reason in avoiding serious injury. The fact that nobody was badly hurt helped not to focus on the “what ifs” but the child was the one who left a lasting impact on me. Attending to her and soothing her shifted my focus outward and taught me the worth of directing attention externally in a crisis. In the decades since, I have frequently pondered if she recalled any details, and what a major event 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. Having her companionship during the accident 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, providing me with insight – and serving as a reminder that, regardless of how terrible things look, it remains a gift to grow older.