So, here I am, looking forward to going back to London, thinking about all the glorious reasons to be happy about it, messaging friends, when CRASH.

And just like that, my amazing friend and mentor, Moira Gemmill, was dead. She was the 5th cyclist this year to be killed by a tip truck in London, according to the BBC report. She died on Thursday, pronounced dead at the scene, her bike crushed under the wheels and that was that. As I don’t know anyone else who knows her, I found out from a newspaper article early this morning. If my husband didn’t read the paper, it would have taken months for me to find out, probably when I hadn’t heard from her after trying to arrange a meet in the summer to celebrate my return. It is fair to say I am in shock. I cannot comprehend the awfulness of what happened, or begin to process the idea that I will never see, or speak to her again.

My inspirational and talented boss who I worked with at the V&A museum for two years and have known another ten. Gone.

My funny, stylish, picture-straightener of a friend who I shared too many bottles of white wine with commiserating over the dreadful actions of the other 600-odd employees we worked with. Gone.

My long-term mentor, the woman who encouraged me to aim high, gave me my reference for my MA, who I trusted, who believed in me, who regularly asked me what I thought about her incredible career because for some strange reason she respected my opinion as much as I did hers. Gone.

All gone. There is so much sadness. I am finally coming to London (as she said when I told her, ‘about time too, missy’) and now she won’t be there. If it wasn’t all over the news, I would think it a lie. I keep hoping, stupidly, that it weren’t true. How can it be true, that my friend was run over and killed by a truck? How can she be an item on the news instead of a person sitting opposite me a few months from now, laughing and chatting and being alive? What a tragic, awful way to die. Not that there’s a good way to die. But this is a terrible, devastating shocker of a way to go.

She was in the prime of her life, with an amazing career behind and ahead of her. ‘I’m going to work for the Queen’, she’d emailed me, in January. I know she got a kick out of saying it even though she was always so super cool about everything. She was fifteen years my senior and I knew I would never catch up with her, or achieve half of what she did, but it was fun to try, and she encouraged me every step of the way. How do you replace someone like this in your life? The answer: I never will. I don’t think I could even bring myself to try.

The last time I saw Moira, last summer, she got on her bike after lunch and with a wave, she was gone. And now, just like that, she isn’t coming back.

London will not be the same without her.

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