I was eleven years old when I saw my future. I was standing near the middle doors of a double- decker bus when a bomb exploded on the upper level, peeling off the roof like a giant had taken a tin opener to a can of peaches. One moment I was holding onto a pole and the next I was flying through the air, seeing sky, then ground, then sky. A leg whipped past me. A stroller. A million shards of glass, each catching the sunlight.

I crashed to the pavement as debris and body parts fell around me. Looking up through the dust, I wondered what I’d been doing on a London sightseeing bus, which is what it looked like without a roof.

People were hurt. Dying. Dead. I spat grit from between my teeth and tried to remember who had been standing next to me. A tattooed girl with white earbuds under hacked purple hair. A mother with a toddler in a stroller. Two old ladies were in the side seat, arguing about the price of cinema tickets. A guy with a hipster beard was carrying a guitar case decorated with stickers from around the world…

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