The Depths of Solitude by Jo Bannister

solution: build it tall enough to meet everyone’s requirements. The social services department had its offices on the first two floors, with the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, Help The Aged and Women’s Aid above. But the library on the fourth floor had the best view: across the park and the lower town to the Channel.
    There were flowers in the vestibule and two lifts. One had an Out of Order sign hanging from the button. Brodie thumbed for the other. At ten-fifteen on a Thursday morning she had both vestibule and lift to herself.
    The first indication of something amiss was when the lift failed to stop at the fourth floor, the bulb marked Library flashing briefly on and off as the car continued up into the roof-space where it stopped.
    The doors remained shut. Brodie blinked at them, perplexed. Of course the attics would be used for something, if only storage, and it would be inconvenient to carry everything up a last flight of steps. And if the lift had a button marked Attics then every sub-teen in Dimmock and quite a few of their grannies would disappear into the roof-space for hours at a time. A staff key would give access to the restricted levels. All that had happened was that the last person to use it had disengaged too quickly. She pressed the Library button again.
    The lift whined into action and descended. It did not, however, stop at the floor below but continued down through the building to the basement. Eyeing it severely, Brodie pressed the Library button once more. After this, she thought, I’m getting out and using the stairs.
    This time it stopped between floors. She tried the Library button again, then each of the others in turn.
Nothing happened. She tried the Open Doors button: still nothing.
    Fortunately, Brodie had no particular phobias. She didn’t like spiders, and she’d never learned to swim, but neither bugs nor water caused her unreasonable alarm. Being stuck in a broken lift only worried her because, when she failed to arrive, Daniel might decide she’d declined his invitation and leave.
    Of course, if he tried to take the lift he’d find her. Or she could hit the Emergency Assistance button. She hit the Emergency Assistance button.
    After that, nothing she did had any effect on the lift. It accelerated up through the building before slamming to a halt moments before (so it felt) it would have shot out through the roof. It descended in a series of spasms, the elevator equivalent of a learner driver. It froze, ignoring all instructions, for up to a minute at a time, then took off like an electric hare with every greyhound in the White City on its tail.
    And actually, it wasn’t at all funny. She was locked in a steel box, the thing was clearly out of control, and no one knew she was there. She hammered on the walls though she had no idea if she could be heard. Now the box fell abruptly: when it stopped she lost her footing and sprawled on the floor. The doors opened. She was, thank God, back in the vestibule. She climbed to her feet and headed for safety – but the doors snapped shut like jaws and the lift shot upwards again. Brodie let out a cry of frustration and, now, fear.
    Twice more she rode the roller-coaster through the building. The next time she hit the floor she stayed there, limbs splayed, eyes wide as if there was something other than polished steel to see. All she knew about lifts was that they were safe. If they failed, they failed safe. She
had no idea how this one had managed to override its programming, or how long it could continue throwing itself around like this before crashing to its destruction. And hers.
    Bizarrely enough, she found herself doing sums. Four storeys – six including the attic and basement. Four metres per storey? A free-falling object accelerates at thirty-two feet per second … Daniel would have been proud of her, but actually she was less interested in the math than the bottom line. Could she survive if the lift tore itself free and dropped from the