For Ms Maureen Mitchell, the physical wounds she suffered when a terrorist bomb ripped through the Mulberry Bush pub in central Birmingham as she and her fiancé, Mr Ian Lord, shared a drink on November 21st, 1974, may have healed. But 30 years on she is still dealing with the emotional legacy.
For her, the talk in recent days about an IRA apology for the assault that left her close to death - so close that she was given the last rights in the hospital bed where she spent the following three months - is meaningless.
"An apology won't mean anything to me personally," Mrs Mitchell said yesterday.
"Some people in the city might find it useful and helpful in putting it all behind them. But before they could apologise, they [ the perpetrators] have to admit that they did it, and that would be a big step.
"I've met a lot of ex-IRA terrorists, and I've never seen them ever show any remorse for what they did."
Ms Mitchell suffered serious internal injuries and spent a week in intensive care as she slipped in and out of consciousness, her family fearing she would not pull through.
"I was vaguely aware of what was going on around me," she said. "It took three months before I could go back to work." Mr Lord, she said, had bad facial and leg injuries.
"We were among the lucky ones, we had something to focus on as we were seven months away from getting married, so we put our energy into that, thinking 'they're not going to get at us, we're going to carry on with our lives'," Ms Mitchell said.
Speaking outside St Philip's Cathedral, where she had taken part in the memorial service for the victims of the double bombings, Ms Mitchell said she had never been angry about what happened to her but had sought to understand the events by getting involved in peace and reconciliation efforts in Northern Ireland.
Working with the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation, in Co Wicklow, had helped her come to terms with her experience and meet people "from the other side".
But she has been outspoken in her criticism for the lack of sympathy that Birmingham's city fathers have shown for victims of the bombings, and their reluctance to establish support groups or sponsor international peace conventions.
She spoke of difficulties convincing City Hall to hold memorial meetings like yesterday's, the first at which the city had contributed a wreath, to enable victims to grieve and, with time, heal.
Ms Mitchell recalled the divisions that beset Birmingham after the bombings.
"My father was Irish, from Derry; he worked in the car industry at the time and there was a terrible backlash against him - until his workmates found out that I was injured and lying in hospital," she said.
"There is no backlash now. My father lived to see things turn around again, for the community to reunite and move on."