For complicated reasons I ended up in New York, with my partner,during early October 2001. Ground Zero was a magnet. We had not known whether we'd visit when we were in the city: we were unsure what the mood would be, whether as foreigners we would be seen as supportive or prurient. We felt a powerful curiosity mixed with a vague dread: perhaps we didn't know ourselves as well as we thought, and the place would be too affecting, even frightening.

We walked down town. There were six or seven informal vantage points, all a block or two back from the chaos. It was just as it had been on the seemingly endless TV representations: the policemen and women, firemen: the dangling metal, the smoking pile of rubble. But the relatives had gone. Nobody was looking for anybody anymore.

I was interested by the crowds. Almost everybody had a camera. There wasn't, as there would have been in any European city, any sign of furtiveness or self-consciousness. We all snapped away. We all stared. Occasionally someone asked for permission to lay a bouquet and was escorted through the barrier by a policeman or woman. There were frequent makeshift souvenir stalls, merchandising images of the Twin Towers as they had been. There were several happy clappy bands - and there was an excitement, a nosiness and, yes, prurience: but mostly a permeating sense of awe.