Then we was down the spiral stair as fast as we could, me leading the Doctor like I was leading a blind man. I was making straight for the lift but the clanking of its gears told us there was someone on their way! We could either nip back up the stairs (and nipping wasn’t coming easily to the Doctor right then) or we could head through that door at the end of the corridor with the glass porthole. So I dragged the Doctor towards the door. It was agony for him, I’m sure, because of how much it must’ve hurt – but also for me because he was so slow! And every step his red feet took, the sound of the lift come closer and closer.

At last we got to the door, and I pushed it open just as the lift arrived. I shoved the Doctor through into the room beyond and looked back over my shoulder. It was Ada Gillyflower who’d come up in the lift and she tapped her white cane as she headed towards the spiral stair, a bowl of something clutched in her other hand.

But I had no time to concern myself with her.

*

Tap, tap, tap went Ada’s cane again as she reached the top of the spiral stair, another bowl of grisly vittles in her gloved hand. She smiled to herself and put out her other hand, tenderly, to the green baize door. ‘You’re all I have, Monster. But all will be well. Imperfect as we are, there be will room for us in the new Jerusalem!’

But something was different. The door gave to her touch – and creaked open. With a sense of rising panic, Ada made her way into the cell, her white cane sweeping in arcs over the flagged stone floor. At length it met metal – the clanking coils of the Doctor’s abandoned manacles. Ada’s beautiful face fell.

‘No … Noooo! Where are you, Monster? Where are you?’

She sank to her knees and held the chains close to her face. Hot tears sprang to her eyes and tumbled over her scarred cheeks. ‘My Monster,’ she sobbed. ‘My Monster … ’

Being the reminiscences of Miss Jenny Flint, lady’s maid of Paternoster Row, London.

I dashed through the doorway with the porthole and bumped straight into the Doctor who was just standing there, still as a statue and gazing around him.