The letter from Daphne combined with Eileen having told him she’d witnessed the end of the war seemed to have convinced him they hadn’t altered the future. He’d even brushed off his collision with Alan Turing.

But he didn’t know about Eileen’s withholding the City of Benares letter from Alf and Binnie Hodbin’s mother. Or about Eileen’s having given Binnie aspirin when she had the measles.

Mike had said Turing hadn’t been injured by the collision, but he wouldn’t have had to be. This was Alan Turing, the man who was behind Bletchley Park’s success, and he still hadn’t cracked the naval Enigma code. What if Mike’s colliding with him had interrupted his train of thought at a crucial moment, and he didn’t crack the code? Or what if Mike had done something else while he was in Bletchley which—combined with Hardy’s rescue and what she and Eileen had done—would tip the balance of the war later on? Or what if he’d done something now in Saltram-on-Sea?

I should have warned him, she thought. I should have told him about the City of Benares and about the possible discrepancies. But she wasn’t certain they were discrepancies. And he’d been so distraught when she told him about her deadline, and then, after he’d got the letter from Daphne, so certain that the retrieval team had come.

And if they have, then there’s no reason to worry him with any of this. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

But what if they haven’t?

“You are worried, aren’t you?” Eileen asked anxiously. “About Mike’s not phoning.”

“No,” Polly said firmly. “Remember, he said the phone at the Crown and Anchor wasn’t at all private. He may have to wait till he arrives back in Dover to find one that is. Or the telephone lines may be out.”

From the shelling Dover is taking every night, Polly added silently, wishing Mike would find a way to phone so she could tell him about the shelling and the upcoming raids. He’d be all right for the next few days—the raids would all be in the Midlands or the west—Liverpool on the twentieth, Plymouth on the twenty-first, and Manchester the night after that. But on the twenty-fourth Dover would undergo a major shelling, and two trains in Kent would be machine-gunned from the air.

They waited another quarter of an hour, hoping he’d phone. “It’s twenty till,” Polly said finally. “We really must leave, or I’ll be late for rehearsal.”

“All right,” Eileen said reluctantly. “Wait, was that the phone? It’s Mike. I knew it!” She pelted down the stairs to answer it.

It was Mrs. Rickett’s sister, and it was clear they intended to talk for some time. “She’s phoned twice in the past three days. Mike’s very probably phoned already and couldn’t get through,” Eileen said as they walked over to Notting Hill Gate. She paused. “You knew Lady Caroline, didn’t you? When you were in Dulwich.” And when Polly looked at her in surprise, “The day I got the letter from the vicar about Lady Caroline and Lord Denewell, you said ‘You worked for Lady Denewell?’ ”