Lesley Whittle lay naked in a sleeping bag sixty feet underground in what she described as a sewer. It had taken them some time to climb down through a hatch and several ladders and passages, sometimes in the dry and sometimes through several inches of icy cold water. The hooded creature who’d ordered her out of bed at the house didn’t say much, and when he did it was in a funny accent making him hard to understand. He did a lot of pointing and grunting and when they finally reached a ledge at what felt a mile underground, on which there was barely enough room for both of them, he told her to take off her dressing-gown to let it dry and hung it up on one of the rungs of the ladder. When he told her to get into the sleeping-bag she thought he was going to get in with her and rape her. But instead he went on fussing with all the bits and pieces he seemed to have prepared for her on the ledge. He went through everything like a hotel manager pointing out what was provided for her comfort and how she’d be alright if she didn’t do anything silly. Then he put a wire noose around her neck and did it up with a spanner. He said in his funny accent that he’d put something like tape around it to make it softer, and once he’d done that he relaxed a bit and made them a mug of tea on a little stove he set up in the corner, the sort of thing people used when they went camping. At one point he stopped and looked around and said, ‘It’s not so bad, is it?’