“Not Bletchley Park,” Eileen said. “VE-Day.”

“VE-Day?”

“Yes,” Eileen said, her face stony. She turned to confront Polly. “That’s why when I saw you in Oxford, you asked me if that was where I was coming back from. And why, when we asked you who’d gone to VE-Day, you changed the subject. You saw me there, didn’t you?”

As long as VE-Day was all Eileen knew about, it would be all right. She could tell them.

“Is what she’s saying true?” Mike asked. “Were you at VE-Day, Polly?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus.”

“And you saw me there,” Eileen said.

Polly hesitated so it would sound like she was reluctantly admitting to it. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Mike asked.

“I … at first, in Oxford, I didn’t want Eileen to be angry with me. I hadn’t known Mr. Dunworthy wasn’t going to let her go to VE-Day. I didn’t want her to think I’d stolen the assignment from her. And then when we found out the drops weren’t working, we were already in so much trouble, and you were both so distraught, I didn’t want to add to your worries.”

“But if we’d known—” Mike began.

“If you’d known, what? There wasn’t anything either of you could do about it,” Polly said angrily, hoping the show of anger would stop them from asking any more questions. “And you already had more than enough to deal with.”

“You say you saw Eileen,” Mike said. “Are you certain it was her? Did you talk to her?”

“No. I saw her from a distance. In the crowd in Trafalgar Square the night before VE-Day. She was standing next to one of the lions. The one whose nose had been knocked off in the Blitz.”

“You were in Trafalgar Square on VE-Day,” Mike said. “When did you come through?”

Polly thought rapidly. They’d never believe she’d only been there for the two days of the victory celebration. “April eighth,” she said. “I was there to observe the winding down of the war during its last few weeks. I posed as a Wren working as a typist in the War Office.”

“A typist,” Eileen said.

“Yes.”

“April eighth,” Mike said. “That gives us four years—”

“Four years and five months,” Eileen said.

“Right,” Mike said. “Nearly four and a half years. And when I was talking about increased slippage, I meant a few months, not years. We’ll be out of here long before your deadline, Polly.”

“Which is what?” Eileen asked.

Mike looked at Eileen in surprise. “She just told us. She said she came through April eighth—”

“She’s lying. That isn’t her deadline.”

There was a silence, and then Mike said, “Is she right, Polly? Are you lying?”

“Yes,” Eileen answered for her. “When I told her about one of the historian’s drops to the Reign of Terror and the storming of the Bastille being switched, she went absolutely white, and they were only four years and two months apart.”

And I’m obviously not as good an actress as Sir Godfrey’s always telling me I am, Polly thought, cursing herself for not having said she’d gone through earlier than April. “It was Pearl Harbor I was worried about, not—”