In 2016, Lindsay Nicholson was driving home to Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire from her mother’s house in Essex. It was a Sunday night and her thoughts were all for the week that stretched ahead. Nicholson was then the editor of Good Housekeeping, Britain’s biggest-selling glossy magazine, and as usual her diary was bulging: lunches, interviews, photoshoots. Not that this troubled her. Quite the reverse, in fact. She loved her job uncommonly, not only because it was interesting and fun and she was very good at it, but because it had long been her refuge: the best way she knew to avoid thinking about other, more difficult things. As her BMW joined the Southend Arterial to a soundtrack provided by Magic FM, she was all anticipation, her mind as expectant as the white damask tablecloths at Claridge’s, the hotel where she would regularly meet important advertisers for tea.
But then something happened. A lorry up ahead crossed suddenly into her lane, and not in the usual way. It was at a right angle to the road, the container behind its cab slaloming in a balletic arc that would henceforth be for ever imprinted on her mind. All she could do in the next split second was to brake, hard, and aim for the central reservation, hoping desperately that the drivers behind her would manage to stop themselves without hitting her. What was going on? Why had the lorry, the side of which was now about to fill her windscreen, pulled out? Only later would she learn that a man had tried to kill himself by running in front of it. He would spend the next six weeks in hospital, but like everyone else involved in the accident, he would live to fight another day.
