The base had been swept clean, and she just sat huddled up with her knees to her chin looking at the confining walls. The two iron stays hammered in at the base to stabilise the ladder, stuck into her back. She hadn’t used them as she didn’t envisage carrying bags and bags of wash up to the top. She turned slowly around, and tried to remove them. They were uncomfortable and if she could get rid of them she could at least have a peaceful minute or two before seeking the surface and getting on with the thousand and one things that had to be done that day. They proved to be much more firmly implanted than she had thought. She knocked them this way and that with the hammer head of her pick and at last one of them loosened up enough to be freed. She pried into the hole that was left, and brought a little pile of gravel out. She worked the area well, and spreading open the lip of her bag managed to collect most of it. It did not look very interesting, the strong light didn’t reveal a glint or shine at all. Convinced that she had cleaned that little area out, she began working the other spike, sideways, up and down, knocking it more and more strongly with her pick. This time the spike suddenly found a weakness in the level above and flew out quite viciously.
