The pipe had partially caved in, creating a shelf of broken clay and brick. Wastewater couldn’t flow to the main sewer under Fulham Palace Road. Worse, tree roots from a nearby London plane tree had invaded the joint, forming a dense, knotted mass Carla called “a root dam.”

It was a Sunday evening in November. Elena ran a bath, and the water took forever to drain. Then the kitchen sink gurgled. By midnight, a foul smell seeped from the plughole. The next morning, her neighbour from the flat upstairs knocked. “Your toilet waste is coming up through my shower tray,” he said quietly.

The engineer, a woman named Carla, arrived with a van marked “CCTV Drain Surveys.” She explained the process simply: “We send a rod-mounted camera down your drain. It records everything – cracks, blockages, collapses. The video is evidence. No guessing.”

For the first ten metres, the pipe looked old but clear. Then the image wobbled. The camera entered a section of terracotta pipe, laid when Victoria was on the throne. And there it was: a .