I can’t account for my terror. It wasn’t dark or airless in there, I could even see natural light at the end of this second passage. It was no greater in length than the one I had just made my way through. But I was terribly afraid. Of what, I don’t know. The claustrophobic’s worst experiences are those where the fear has no name and no definition. It’s a dread of some unidentifiable nemesis. Trying to analyze it afterward leaves you confused and angry and knowing it will be just the same next time.

There, in the brickwork cylinder, pushing myself hard against the curve of the wall as if, like a secret panel, it might at the right kind of pressure open and let me out into sunlight and air, I clung, knowing I could neither go on nor go back. I leaned against the wall, my back to it, my fingers holding the shallow ridges of mortar while I gazed up at the blue sky, my heart beating heavily, rhythmically, with blows that hurt my ribs.

There was, of course, no longer any hope of getting to GUP by two, there was no hope of getting there at all, of getting anywhere. This was the end of the world. I was there forever. I sank down slowly to the concrete floor, wrapping my arms around my knees and bowing my head against them. If his footfalls made any sound, it failed to reach me. He came through from the Paddington Station end, treading softly and catlike in thick-soled trainers. I sensed someone was there and I lifted my head. Saying I knew who it was sounds impossible, but I did. It was his extreme fairness, so accurately described by Beryl, which identified him. I saw a face that was lightly tanned, with just a little coloring on its high forehead, regular features and short nose. His shapely mouth wasn’t full enough for a girl but was just right for a man. He had rainwater-gray eyes and his hair was cut short and trim, white-blond as crystal. A tall, slim, wiry person of about my own age in blue jeans and a blue-and-green checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

“Is something wrong?”

He said it gently, almost tenderly. It was a peculiarity of our generation, I believe, that, largely indifferent to the fate of the middle-aged and elderly, we cared about the very old and we cared about our contemporaries. When Max was twenty or when my father was, I don’t think they’d have stopped and asked what was troubling a girl they had found hunched up on the floor of an underpass. They’d have been too inhibited, too callous, and probably too busy. It wasn’t, after all, as if I was an attractive sight, with tears running down my face, tunnel-wall dirt all over my hands and streaked down my cheeks.