On a Tube journey in April, Jaya Pathak found her Victoria line carriage emptying out the closer it approached her stop. Among the few people left was a man sitting beside her, staring at her. “I didn’t know if it was dodgy and I didn’t want to make a big deal of it so I kept using my phone,” says the 27-year-old. “But then he pretended to fall asleep on my shoulder, which was very uncomfortable.”
Jaya began mapping her distance to others, wondering who she could latch onto should he try anything. “I pushed my body as far away from him as I could the third time he lay on my shoulder. That was when I realised his eyes were open,” she recalls. He eventually got off the train at Blackhorse Road station which left her feeling slightly relieved for a moment; but the stranger did not continue to the station exit. He stood in front of the closed carriage doors, mouthing indecipherable things and trying to signal to her to get off of the train while it was held at a red signal.
