Scan

She was deep in London clay, a hundred feet underground, the train having paused for a rest just short of Baker Street. In the darkness outside was visible the enfolding curve of the tunnel and also, at a distance, a gleam of yellow, a worm with lampy eyes making its way in another direction altogether. There came into her mind wartime images of burrows and shelters, the leaf-encircled entrance to a green lane; landlocked landscapes with no sky or sea, no people bar the odd melancholy dreamer like her reflection in the window. The urge to hide was what powered so many children's books of that time, escaping into wardrobes or living under the floorboards; the hobbit in his cosy bunker; midnight gardens silvered with nostalgia, clocks transfixed so that time stood still. Since last week's diagnosis she had herself fallen out of time.