Saying goodbye to our daughter en route to catching the ferry, for our second winter abroad.
We were lunching in a country pub.
She was at uni and had spent the last couple of weeks showing two American friends around London .
She was excited because they'd offered to do the same for her, next summer.
They both had good jobs with different firms in the World Trade Center.
We'd blagged our way into The Windows of the World bar, on the top of one of the towers, when visiting NY previously and were marking her card for her for places to visit.
Our son rang, asking if we had access to aTV ?
The pub didn't have one but another one nearby did.
We saw the first tower burning and then the second hit.
She was in shock and frantically tried to phone her friends, but was unable to get through. They didn't have SMS in the states then.
We stayed with her through the night, without getting through and she insisted that we leave to catch our ferry, next morning.
It was 4 days, before communication was possible.
By a complete miracle, one friend was visiting clients, that day and the other was at the hospital, visiting his mother, who'd been admitted, the night before, with a heart attack.
It was a hard 4 days.