London 7/7 survivor Gill Hicks: Why we must be united in the face of terror

Gill Hicks on a visit to the Hamara Centre in Leeds last year.

We may be forever haunted by the image of a child's body, laying covered with a thermal blanket, her doll by her side on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. The innocent young life of this little girl was ended, alongwith 83 others, when Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel ploughed a 19 tonne truck into a crowd who were gathered to celebrate Bastille Day.

It is a national holiday, one which acknowledges the French Revolution and remembers the struggle to achieve freedom and liberty. But the appreciation of freedom, liberty and humanity were not present in the heinous actions of Bouhlel.

We are not desensitised to these crimes. Every loss and maiming of life, every act of terrorism ignites an outpouring of public grief, of solidarity and empathy. But the very indiscriminate nature of terrorism also plays to our worst fears, that next time it could be us or someone we love. It makes us worry that at some point in the future we won’t just be viewing events from afar through the prism of rolling news.

I certainly appreciate that feeling, because 11 years ago, when four violent extremists carried out an attack on London, it wasn’t someone else who was directly affected, it was me.

People gather at a makeshift memorial to observe a minute of silence to honor the victims of the Nice attack. AP Photo/Luca Bruno.

The memory of that morning in July, 2005 is still as vivid as if the events that changed my life happened a week ago. I was just on my way to work, it was just another Thursday in London. I was running late and out of my usual perfectly choreographed commute, tired from celebrating our Olympic bid success the day before.

A suicide bomber and I, unknowingly, boarded the same Tube