[Illustration: John Sadler, with apologies to Da Vinci. johnsadlerillustration.com]

THE three other women in the train carriage are on their phones. At the far end sits a young man with white headphones. At the other, a man with cropped hair is talking quietly to himself. I open my book. The train leaves Camden Road.

“You’re lying if you say you’ve never seen a dead person,” the cropped haired man suddenly shouts.

Everyone looks up. But his gaze is inwards. He’s talking to shadows only he can see. We look down again. Intermittently, he repeats the exclamation. We ignore him.

But then comes the sound of heavy boots. He’s treading his way towards the young man with the headphones.

He stops in front of him.

“Take your headphones out or I’ll rip out your eye.”

The young man casts him a bewildered look.

“I’m listening to Coldplay,” he says with clearly false bravado.

The non-sequitur fails to appease. The cropped haired man leans towards the eyeball he’s threatened.

In a nanosecond, I am in two minds. On the one hand, I am rigid with uncharacteristic fear and on the other aghast at my lack of response. Why aren’t I intervening to help? I always intervene. But when I try to speak, my lips won’t move.

I notice that the cropped haired man is carrying a khaki bag, half hidden behind his back. It’s long and thin.

Through its canvas folds is something equally long and thin. What is it? An iron bar? A rifle?

“Take your headphones out or I’ll rip out your eye,” he repeats.

The man with the white headphones looks pleadingly around the carriage. And still, looking at the swinging bag and the muscles on the cropped haired man’s arms, I am too afraid to speak. Who is this mute me I don’t recognise?

Rescue arrives in the form of a stranger. An even younger man racing from the next carriage. He has shoulder-length hair that flails behind him. Skidding to a halt, he places his slight body in front of the attacker, raises his palm, and says firmly,

“Stop!”

The train is now at Kentish Town. To my surprise, the cropped haired man pauses to consider the man with the shoulder-length hair. After hurling a few obscenities at him, he then simply gets off. The whole episode has lasted two minutes.

For days, I am haunted by my abject cowardice. I’ve become someone who doesn’t speak out. In Nazi Germany, evil succeeded partly because people stood by and did nothing.

It’s an ugly damascene moment of sorts. I did befriend the besieged man for the rest of the journey and offered to make a witness statement to the police, but I can’t come to terms with the fact I said nothing when he was being threatened.

A few days on, I am at a zebra crossing in central London. Next to me is a bullish-looking character, well over six foot, talking to a much smaller man at his side. The smaller man is in a too-tight brown coat and shoulder fat bulges through the material. Flushed and puffy, he has the face of a boozer. It’s Nigel Farage.

Filled with fury at the sight of this enemy of the people, I open my mouth. But again, nothing comes out. I am scared of the bullish man at his side who looks like he’s capable of anything. But why? I’ve always been fearless in the past.

The lights turn green. Farage and his bodyguard step away. Once again, I’ve said nothing.

Later that week, comes what I think is a chance for my redemption. It’s in the form of another political figure.

Cycling past the Heath, I catch sight of an overweight man in flapping floral shorts, crumpled shirt, and with a mop of blond hair framing heavy jowls. He’s got a little dog at his side. It can only be Boris Johnson.

Pedalling up the path, I know exactly how I’ll start. “Explain to me why you partied, you who made rules so strict I couldn’t even have a funeral for my brother.”

I am filled with more than my own rage. Perhaps it’s the rage of all those others who also couldn’t go to funerals.

Or visit families. Or were shipped from hospital to care homes and certain death. I grow in stature. Tall, powerful, standing up on the pedals, I come up behind Johnson.

“Excuse me!” I bark.

The figure turns around.

“Oh!” exclaims not Johnson but a disgruntled, middle-aged woman. “What a fright you gave me.”

I clamber off my bike. Apologise profusely for making her jump. I am a careless cyclist. There are so many of them, she says. They all think they own the road. To tell her I thought she was Johnson seems too rude.

Accepting her assessment of me, I hang my head and wheel my bike away.

A truly bathetic end to a week of missed opportunities.