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The moment I realized the end was near occurred in my 20s, when life was really just starting out. My best friend, Helen, and I were traveling to Blackburn to reunite with an old university friend who had made a new home there for work. Delighted to be together, and enjoying the thought of the social gathering to come, we chatted nonstop as we made our way by train from York.

We put our suitcases – packed with necessities such as bottles of wine and the clogs I had just bought – above our heads and got seated in a comfortable double seat. Approximately 50 minutes after starting our journey, I was vaguely conscious of a bang. Then came another, this time impossible to ignore. A female passenger shrieked as our carriage catapulted upward in what felt like a delayed sequence. In an instant, Helen and I were somehow on our feet in the middle of the aisle, holding each other tight. Looking down, eyelids tightly closed, I anticipated the carriage to flip and explode, similar to cinematic scenes. I remember thinking our families and friends receiving the notification. Subsequently, there was the little girl crying.

“It's going to be fine,” I said softly, my tone was hoarse. “It’s all over,” I stated, primarily to calm my own nerves.

She was about seven or eight years old, and looked like she had no guardian. Her weeping jolted me from my stupor; this was my opportunity to be useful. I went to where she was standing and gave her a reassuring hug. “Don't turn around,” Helen shouted, the warning came after the fact. I caught sight of a man whose face was bloody. A huge metal object had penetrated the window behind us. Afterward, we discovered a runaway digger 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. Then came the noise of sirens and a fellow passenger requested that I to pass the little girl to him so he could help her out the window, where children were being evacuated to waiting firefighters. A few minutes later, Helen and I were likewise scrambling out of the train window and scaling a ladder down down to the rails.

Back on terra firma – beside a freight warehouse in Pudsey – uncontrollable shivers took over. I searched for the little girl and saw her being scooped up by her mum, as it transpired had been in the lavatory during the incident. A firefighter kindly retrieved my clogs. Another traveler plonked down on Helen’s case, resulting in it breaking open – however, fortunately our wine remained intact. Once we had waited for thirty minutes, we traveled in a free cab to Blackburn, with a teenage boy and the woman 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 hoped for information.

With the invincibility of youth, we pushed the derailment from our minds and carried on with our night out, which featured a notable act 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. The locomotive was decelerating to come into Leeds station, which had been the key factor in avoiding serious injury. The fact that nobody was badly hurt allowed us not to obsess over the “what ifs” but the child was the one who left a lasting impact on me. Looking after her and soothing her distracted me from my own fear and demonstrated the value of looking outwards in a crisis. Over the years, I have repeatedly asked myself if she had any memory of the event, and what a major event it had been for her.

Helen and I have now been friends for more than three decades and Pudsey has become shorthand for our skill in managing with anything, provided we have each other. Her presence that fateful day gave me the impression I was shielded against the most terrifying aspects. The derailment further transformed my method of handling other types of crises, offering me a new viewpoint – and reinforcing the idea that, however bad things seem, it remains a gift to age.