I went there with Rachel my best friend from childhood. We both wore black. Even our trainers were black. We took the train together from our homes in Sussex and joined the queue in London at 7 p.m., when day light was still strong, in the knowledge we might be part of this slow-moving mass of humanity for twelve hours or much more. Our backpacks were filled with sweaters, extra socks, bananas, energy bars, phone chargers and handkerchiefs. The journey, or what increasingly felt like a pilgrimage, was buzzing with chat, with introductions that followed a very Queen-like sort of conversation.

‘Have you come far?’ ‘What do you do?’ as we made friends with those who formed our immediate little group: a carpenter, a schoolgirl, a nurse, a young American historian from Virginia now an Oxford postgraduate, three elegant women…a mother and her two daughters, all from Delhi, a second-hand car salesman from Plymouth who made us shake with laughter.

As we walked, darkness fell and the pavements were lit by a mesmerisingly beautiful moon, the outline defined with precision in a piercingly clear sky, and the planet Mars shimmering above. London was aglow, the historic architectural spectacle putting on a glorious display of mourning with St Paul’s, The Tower, Fishmongers’ Hall, London Bridge, the Houses of Parliament bathed in a regal purple glow. Still and silent beneath a tree a huge fox stared out at the vast crowds, baffled to be joined in his solitary night time prowl by so many intruders moving through his private landscape.

And here the tide of people streamed into Shakespeare’s London, the streets he had walked, his Globe Theatre, Southwark Cathedral, his River Thames glistening beside us, almost empty of vessels, its flow occasionally interrupted by a shrouded barge and our own century’s police motor boats flashing their blue lights, electrifying the water. And I thought how Shakespeare had written from these places, described this city for our only other Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare who knew the meaning of grief, and how to express it as well…better than… anyone.

I thought of T.S Eliot’s century old image of crowds flowing over a bridge shrouded in darkness, in which death had undone so many. Occasionally dashing from our places in the line to stalls selling hot chips and tea, we were sustained by laughter and our common, profoundly serious purpose.

Eventually we arrived at Westminster. We climbed the carpeted stairs. The Hall – the medieval building where Henry VIII held his wedding party with Anne Boleyn, where Guy Fawkes was tried, where the trial of Charles I took place in the freezing January of 1649 as he argued with Parliament that they had no right to try him, before he was condemned to death, where Oliver Cromwell took his place as Ruler supreme – is simply enormous. And there, right in the centre of the Hall, floodlit and shining with emotional brilliance, sitting high above us on the deep purple catafalque was the crimson flag-draped coffin of the Queen. Golden candles guttered all around the foot of the platform, soldiers, their heads bowed and motionless, guarding their sovereign. And on the coffin itself a delicate wreath of all white flowers, the golden orb and sceptre of state and then the crown, so much smaller than we had imagined, the glittering jewel-hung circlet that, when placed on her head almost seventy years ago had made the Queen the Queen. Very slowly Rachel and I moved together with our wonderful queue friends towards the pinnacle of our pilgrimage, tears silently falling onto our cheeks, positioning ourselves right in the centre of the catafalque to make our very best curtsy, overcome by the intensity of the silence, of the moment.

Afterwards as we emerged into the beauty of the dawn and walked slowly down the empty Mall towards Buckingham Palace, the whole thing felt like the most incredible dream…a dream shimmering with tears, but also with pride in recognition of the respect we felt for such an inspirational woman.

Why did I give up a whole night’s sleep to walk in the dark, in the cold, with a massive number of strangers? I thought I had decided on impulse. But in my mind a sequence of thought had been forming. Aged ten I had been with my mother and brother to see Winston Churchill lying in state in the same hall in 1965. His was the first coffin I had even seen. My brother said to me this week it was a scene that he, then aged seven, would never forget.

I thought of the power of missing someone I loved. I thought of my own mother. She was two years younger than the Queen. I thought of my father, a Grenadier who, still in his uniform just as the Second World War ended, had danced with the Queen. Both of my parents held the utmost reverence for this young woman who ascended the throne the year before their marriage. Time and memory and love merged as I knew that I must go. It is the things in life that you don’t do that you regret. I took my black dress from the cupboard and made my way to the start of the pilgrimage, the possibility of regret replaced with gratitude, a sense of continuity bringing reassurance, memory returning me to a place of love.