And what else has she worked out? Polly wondered.

“Yes,” she said. “She was my commanding officer.”

Eileen nodded as if she already knew that. “And she made you do all the work.”

“No. She was a wonderful commanding officer, hardworking, always thinking of her girls, determined to get us the supplies we needed. That’s why I was so surprised. From what you’d told me about her—”

“I think it must have been because of losing her husband and her son. War changes people. It makes people do things they never thought they could,” Eileen said thoughtfully. “In Mrs. Bascombe’s last letter, she said Una’s become quite a good driver in the ATF. You don’t suppose the war will improve Alf and Binnie Hodbin, do you?”

“I very much doubt it.”

“So do I,” Eileen said as they turned onto Kensington Church Street. “Have you told the troupe that you may not be here for the performance of A Christmas Carol and that they need to arrange for an understudy?”

“Not yet,” Polly said, wishing she could believe that Mike had simply been delayed and that the retrieval team would be waiting for them when they arrived at the tube station, or that when Mrs. Rickett came, she’d tell them Mike had phoned after she’d rung off.

She didn’t, and there was no one at the tube station or at Townsend Brothers the next morning. “He’ll phone today, I know it,” Eileen said confidently, going up to the book department. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

But there was no time for lunch. There were Christmas decorations to put up—evergreen and cellophane garlands and paper bells (the aluminum-foil ones had gone to Lord Beaverbrook’s Spitfire drive) and banners reading There’ll Always Be a Christmas. And there was a horde of customers to contend with.

“The only good thing,” Polly told Eileen when they met after work, “is that we’ve sold so much we’ve run completely out of brown paper.”

But when she arrived at Townsend Brothers the next day there was a large stack of Christmas paper on her counter. “Miss Snelgrove found it in the storeroom,” Doreen said. “From Christmas two years ago. Wasn’t that lucky?”

Polly stared hopelessly at the holly-sprigged sheets. “Haven’t we a duty to turn it in to the War Ministry for the war effort, to make stuffing for gun casings or something?” she asked.

Miss Snelgrove glared at her. “We have a duty to our customers to make this difficult Christmas as happy as possible.”

What about my Christmas? Polly thought. She attempted to convince her customers it was their patriotic duty to take their purchases home unwrapped, but to no avail. It was the only wrapping paper they were likely to get their hands on for the duration, and they didn’t intend to pass up the chance. Some of them even bought things just to obtain the paper, as witness all the bilious lavender-pink stockings she sold. She spent nearly all her time struggling with knots and corners and the rest of it struggling to learn her lines for A Christmas Carol.