Richard wrote a mental diary in his head. Dear Diary, he began. On Friday I had a job, a fiance, a home, and a life that made sense. (Well, as much as an life makes sense). Then I found an injured girl bleeding on the pavement and I tried to be Good Samaritan. Now I've got no fiance, no home, no job, and I'm walking around a couple of hundred feet under the streets of London with the projected life expectancy of a suicidal fruit fly.

I think I've got Fear down, but how do I take it all the way up to Terror?

I thought about moving south, about continuing to run, continuing to pretend I was alive. But it was, I knew now, much too late for that. There are doors, after all, between the living and the dead, and they swing in both directions.

Just go with it. It won't hurt.' I stared at him. Adults only ever said that when it, whatever it happened to be, was going to hurt so much.

Can you believe it? Fifty miles from McDonald's. I didn't think there was anywhere in the world that was fifty miles from McDonald's.

Any view of things that is not strange, is false.

I am not by nature the kind of creator who is transgressive in order to be transgressive.