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T I knew the end was near came a couple of years into my 20s, as my adult life was unfolding. My closest companion, Helen, and I were traveling to Blackburn to reunite with a friend from college who had made a new home there for work. Delighted to be together, and basking in the prospect of the social gathering to come, we conversed constantly as we made our way by train from York.

We placed our luggage – packed with necessities such as our favorite wines and my new pair of black clogs – above our heads and got seated in a comfortable double seat. About 50 minutes into our journey, I was vaguely conscious of a bang. This was followed by a second, which could not be dismissed. A female passenger shrieked as our carriage catapulted upward in what felt like slow motion. Suddenly, Helen and I were upright in the middle of the aisle, hugging each other. With my head lowered, eyelids tightly closed, I expected the carriage to overturn and ignite, like in the movies. I remember thinking our loved ones hearing the tragic update. That's when the sound of the child sobbing.

“You’re all right,” I murmured, my voice sounding croaky. “It's finished now,” I stated, mostly for my own benefit.

She was about seven or eight years old, and appeared to be completely on her own. Her sobbing snapped me back to reality; here was my chance to help. I made my way to where she was standing and put my arm around her. “Don't turn around,” Helen called out, too late. I glimpsed a man whose face was bloody. An enormous piece of metal had crashed through the window behind us. Subsequently, we discovered a runaway digger had rolled down the hill and collided with the train, causing us to derail.

Our compartment was trapped with its nose pointing upward. Then came the noise of sirens and a man nearby requested that I to pass the little girl to him so he could help her out the window, where children were being evacuated to emergency personnel below. Not long afterward, Helen and I were similarly exiting of the train window and scaling a ladder down on to the track.

Back on terra firma – next to a goods shed in Pudsey – I began trembling violently. I looked for the little girl and watched her mother gather her up, as it transpired had been using the restroom at the time of the accident. A rescuer graciously recovered my clogs. Another traveler collapsed 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 complimentary taxi to Blackburn, alongside an adolescent and the female passenger who had damaged the suitcase. Our host was there, visibly shaken. She knew there had been a derailment and a staff member had led her away and made her a cup of tea while she waited for news.

Bolstered by youthful resilience, we set the accident aside and carried on with our night out, which featured a notable act by Blackburn drag queen Clitheroe Kate. No one died in the incident, although several people required hospital treatment. Helen and I sustained only bruises and soreness and discomfort from the violent forward motion in the carriage. The train had been slowing to enter Leeds station, which had been the crucial element in averting grave physical damage. Given that nobody was badly hurt made it easier not to obsess over the “what ifs” but the child was the one who changed my outlook profoundly. Attending to her and soothing her distracted me from my own fear and showed me the importance of focusing on others in a crisis. Over the years, I have frequently pondered 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 has become shorthand for our capacity to handle any situation, provided we have each other. Her presence that fateful day created the sensation that I was protected from the full horror of the event. The derailment further transformed my method of handling other types of crises, offering me a new viewpoint – and serving as a reminder that, however bad things seem, it is always a privilege to grow older.