What do we feel when we walk through death?

Turning away from London Bridge this week, Will Gore considers how humdrum places gain meaning from past events

(PA)

We trample on other people’s memories all the time: by what we say, and what we don’t say; and by our thoughtless, even reckless actions. We do it literally too, when we walk in the spaces that have witnessed others’ personal disasters and triumphs.

Leaving a meeting in Southwark this week, I thought about heading over the river, planning to enjoy the endlessly bewitching swirl of the Thames under wintry sun and to pick up the Tube at Bank station. But then I was struck by the recollection of the hideous events that had taken place on London Bridge just a few days earlier, and all of a sudden, the idea of walking on the pavement where Usman Khan’s murderous assault had been brought to a definitive end seemed a little ghoulish.