Flowers tied with black ribbon, Tooting Bec platform poster

Amy told me she didn't want to go to the Princess of Wales memorial park. This didn't surprise me, she's been upset and argumentative since I got back from Barcelona. She tells me I'm 'mean' a lot. I have to remind myself that this isn't true, that I'm no meaner than usual anyway; that I'm probably no meaner than is normal for a busy, working mum. Thick skins are supposed to be one of motherhood's essentials, like wearing practical shoes, carrying a comb and tissues, and having a constant awareness of where to quickly find food, drink or toilet facilities. I couldn't do the combs and tissues either.

I can't decide whether this change in Amy might be caused by me abandoning her to go to Barcelona when she was ill? Or whether it might be insecurities about Steve being on the scene? Perhaps it's even a normal stage of development? We have the famous terrible twos, I found there were also the tiresome threes, the feisty fours, the fitful fives, now it's constant six year old strops...

On the way to the 'Pirate Ship park' that Amy usually loves to visit she accused me of being a bad Mum, pointing out that it was my fault that she didn't have any friends to play with that day. I should have invited companions for her. She told me I was too shy to ring her friend's mums. She has a point. I am. I feel sensitive about joining in with my friends and their kids on a Sunday. Sunday is a family day, isn't it? I was recently given a last minute invite to a friend's family Sunday lunch. I didn't enjoy it, the smell of single mum sympathy overpowered the aroma of vegetarian gravy, it ruined my appetite, even though the roast potatoes were cooked to perfection.

Sunday is a day of Mums and Dads taking their kids on outings, enjoying rare weekend freedom. Why would they want me and Amy tagging along? I can organise after school friends to come for tea, a time when parents feel inconvenienced by hurrying home for the school run - I'm doing them a small childcare favour, but weekends? Yes, I am shy.

So Amy stood in the street and refused to move. 'I want to go home!' She yelled. 'I hate you!' 'You're mean!' I eventually persuaded her to walk with a few bribes and white lies, so we began to make slow progress towards Tooting Bec tube station.

It was a dramatic arrival at the station. We reached the tube station to be greeted by a fanfare of sirens, and action. A helicopter overhead, cars, and fire engines. Police, and firefighters, and ambulances, descended on the magic station. Three ambulances, four police cars, two fire engines. Uniformed men jogging or talking on radios, or carrying machinery. Strangely the tube station seemed to be still open. I thought I'd better ask before heading down the stairs...

A paramedic snapped, 'No, the station's closed.' And when I asked why, just gave me a pompous, 'I'm not at liberty to say.'

I saw a firefighter carrying a lump of machinery with a saw for cutting things. Another fireman was lifting a plastic stretcher down from the engine.

None of the uniformed people seemed in any particular rush, there was no sense of urgency or excitement just busy, businesslike action. A crowd had gathered, but there was a different mood amongst this crowd, lots of people were on their phones, showing off their involvement in this drama, pretending they needed to make calls to discus lateness or alternative travel plans.

Amy and I speculated about what it might mean. I didn't want to tell her what I thought it meant. I said it might be an 'accident,' a good, vague word. Although I was sure she must realise it was more serious than a cut knee and an elastoplast. I suggested it might be, 'Someone hurt on the tube.' She excitedly chattered about bombs, and people being dead, and 'trains being blown up.'

About a year ago her school had had an assembly to explain 7/7 to the kids. I didn't think this incident was as serious, so I tried to reassure her of that. I didn't think it was as bad as bombs, but I was still upset that anything bad could happen at the tube station I cared about.

There were my stickers on the platform posters... I wondered if someone, whoever it was, at the heart of this drama had noticed those? I hoped not. I didn't want anything to do with Tooting Bec station just then. I wanted to be anonymous, unconnected. It was just a tube station. That's how I wanted to feel.

Amy and I walked to Balham, I thought that Balham tube station might be open so we could still visit the pirate ship park. Amy had forgotten her moodiness, she was just excited, I think my serious mood had intrigued her.

Balham station was shut too. A station official used my word. He said, 'There was an accident at Tooting Bec.' He explained that some passengers on a train near Tooting Bec were forced to walk through the tube tunnel to Balham.

I considered that if Amy hadn't been cross with me we'd have reached Tooting Bec station a few minutes sooner. We might have known more clearly what the 'accident' meant.

We headed to Tooting Common, we played in the playground for a while, we ate our picnic, we decided to head home. Balham station had reopened by then, so we went to the Princess of Wales park as planned. Amy had a lovely afternoon in the sun, then we took the tube back to Tooting Bec.

At Tooting Bec there was no sign that anything had happened. No one would know that the emergency services had dealt with... the 'accident.' It bothered me that there was no sign of any of it, the word had to mean tragedy.

With a road accident you see flowers by the side of the road. It's sad, and no one likes to be reminded that that can happen. London transport don't want anyone reminded of sadness... It felt like I'd told six year old Amy more than station officials would ever tell me.

As I'd stood outside the tube station, I'd wanted to be uneffected, to have no part in the place's strangeness that day. But the tube station had banished it's strangeness so quickly, hidden it away just as if it had never happened. It was decided that no one needed to know. It was by chance that I knew anything at all, and what did I even know..? Everything was designed to make it easy to forget, Tooting Bec returning to 'normal', like any other busy station on the Northern Line. I didn't want to think like that. That didn't seem right at all. So I made a sticker and stuck it at the magic station.