“No,” Maude said, opening a bobby pin with her teeth. “There’s a canteen in the District Line hall.”

“Thank you,” Eileen said, and started along the tunnel. Surprisingly, it was deserted.

Or perhaps not so surprisingly, she thought, walking through a puddle and then another. Water was dripping from the ceiling, and there was a distinctly unwaterlike odor. She walked rapidly toward the stairs at the end.

Halfway there, she was suddenly surrounded by a gaggle of children. They ranged in age from about six to twelve or so, and were incredibly grubby. Fagin’s band of pickpockets, she thought, and tightened her grip on her handbag and the baby.

“Give us a tuppence?” one of them asked, holding out his hand.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Why’s your baby cryin’?” the eldest one asked challengingly.

“Is it sick?”

“Wot’s its name?”

“Has it got the colic?” the others chimed in, dancing around her.

“It’s crying because you’re frightening it,” she said. “So run along.”

“I ’eard ’er tell the ticket seller it weren’t ’er baby,” the girl said. “I think that’s why it’s crying.”

“I bet she pinched it,” the eldest boy said.

The girl circled around behind her.

“That’s why she won’t tell us its name,” the smallest one said, pointedly not looking at the girl, who was edging closer to Eileen’s handbag. “Because she don’t know it. If it is your baby, wot’s its name?”

“Michael,” Eileen said, and walked rapidly away.

They ran to catch up with her. “What’s your name?”

“Eileen,” she said without breaking stride and rounded the corner to a stairway crowded with people.

The sitting and reclining bodies made it nearly impossible to get up the stairs, but it didn’t matter. The children had melted away so quickly she thought there must be a guard at the head of the stairs and scanned the crowd eagerly for him, but there was no one who looked official, only people in coats and nightclothes. Shelterers and evacuees. Eileen shifted the baby to a more comfortable position and picked her way up the stairs and out into the District Line’s hall.

Where there was no canteen and no first-aid station. “Oh, dear,” she said, and was immediately sorry. The baby, whose crying had subsided slightly during the interesting encounter with the urchins, went off again.

“Shh,” Eileen said, walking over to two women standing in an alcove, talking. “I’m supposed to deliver this baby to the authorities,” she said without preamble. “It lost its mother in a fire. But I can’t find—”

“You need to take her to the WVS post,” one of the women said promptly. “They’re in charge of incident victims.”

“Where’s that?” Eileen asked, looking round at the hall.

“Embankment.”

“Embankment? Oh, but—”

“The westbound platform,” the woman said, and the two of them walked quickly away.

Before I could fob the baby off on them, Eileen thought.

What now? She couldn’t take it to Embankment. Mike had told her to wait for him here. If he found John Bartholomew …