He took me in a dull one-horse carriage away from the orphanage, the nag was thin and shivering, the carriage was old and bashed about. We travelled through the sorting lanes, it was a sunny day, I do remember that, and the heaps were so quiet you could barely hear them, there was blue in the sky, the haze was relatively thin. So there it is: blue in the sky, me smiling as we bumped along to Bay Leaf House, actually to Bay Leaf House itself.

‘What, here?’ I asked.

‘Even here,’ he said.

‘Am I going in?’

‘You are. Momentarily.’

‘What a business!’ I said.

We’d always talked about being inside Bay Leaf House, me and my friends, but none of us ever had. We hadn’t got within a hundred yards of it, we’d be moved on pretty sharp if we did. Family only it was. All the rest, keep out. And here I was in a carriage being driven in, family too. Me an Iremonger! The gates were shut behind me and the Cusper fellow was urging me to hurry. And then we were inside the actual place, and there were offices and desks and people with paper and noises and strange pipes everywhere and clanging noises, and distant thuds. People all done up in collars and ties and all of them yellowish.

‘Show us around?’ I asked.

‘Don’t be impertinent,’ he said, ‘don’t touch anything. Come with me.’

So I followed him down some corridor, people busy either side of us, all of them men. And then at a door that had written upon it TO FORLICHINGHAM PARK we stopped, the next door over said FROM FORLICHINGHAM PARK. Cusper rang a bell that hung above the doorframe, there was a creaking cracking sound and then he opened the door TO not FROM and we stepped inside a cupboard-sized room. He told me to hold onto the railing there. I held on, the man pulled on a rope that hung down from the ceiling, I heard a bell sound somewhere and then the cupboard-room began to move. I let out a scream, the world seemed to shift and we were moving down, down, down, I felt my heart rise into my mouth, I thought we should surely be killed, I thought we were plunging to our deaths. There was a sudden burst of light, the man had lit a small gunny-lamp, he wasn’t even holding on, but smiled at me, and told me not to worry. The cupboard-room stopped with a bump, and went downwards no further.

‘Where are we?’ I asked.

‘Under,’ he said, ‘deep under. You must go under to get where you are going.’