I keep thinking about Michelle. Coming home after the theatre this very drunk girl stumbled into me on the escalator going into the underground. Some part of me restrained myself from unleashing a torrent of abuse at her (how dare you bump into my baby!) but I did still gesticulate rudely at her back as she continued stumbling down to the platform.

Then something about her piqued my interest, I couldn't tell you what, but I kept my eye on her. She was so drunk she was walking into the walls sideways and leaning along them to move forward without falling down, and Stu held me back safely so we stayed behind her as she swayed and staggered downwards and closer to the platform. It finally ocurred to me as she stumbled, and almost fell, down the last few stairs before reaching the platform that there was a very real risk she would walk straight off the platform and onto the tracks. By the time this thought had been acknowledged by my pregnancy-dulled brain, she was on the edge of the platform stumbling from side to side as masses of useless Londoners looked at her in disgust (you'd think they'd be used to seeing drunk people late at night). My legs finally registered my command to MOVE NOW and I ran as fast as I could carry my bump, shouting for someone to grab her before she fell. Of course people just stared at her, lurching within centimetres of the platform edge, and this lunatic heavily pregnant woman lumbering along the platform shouting for help behind her. It must have only been 4 or 5 metres but it felt like an eternity and I finally grabbed her as she was lurching heavily to the right where the platform edge was and used my rather substantial body weight to tackle her back to the left and into the crowd (who parted like the biblical ocean. Gits. Why didn't they grab her when I asked them to?).

With my arm around her shoulders I kept her upright until Stu worked out where I'd disappeared to mid-conversation and came over to prop her up on the other side. We got her to put her purse in her bag before she dropped it and found out her name, that she was a Canadian tourist, and that she'd just been to a work function and was now on her way home. I can't condemn how much she'd had to drink because let's face it, I've been as drunk, and drunker than she was, but I will say I'd like to think I never left myself in such a vulnerable position as she put herself in. We just didn't know what to do with her. We found out she lived on the other side of London (we're north west, she was south west), so we took her onto the train with us, spoke to her to keep her awake, then helped her change trains and put her on the train that would take her home. But the thing is, we didn't take her home ourselves. We put her on the train, I asked someone to wake her at her station, and we left because it was so late and I was exhausted. I now regret leaving a young girl is such a vulnerable state. Was it enough that we maybe stopped her from going under a train? Was that the role I was supposed to play in her life at that time? Or should I have done more? I'll never know, but I'll keep looking out for her around Picadilly Circus where she said she worked, and hopefully see her one day and be reassured...