He shook his head. “Can’t get to her, and even if they could, there’s no water. She hasn’t a chance.” And he gave them directions to make their way back to Bishopsgate.

“There’s got to be some way to go to Creed Lane without goin’ all that way,” Alf said after the warden walked away. “Try Gresham. Second left.”

But Gresham Street was a solid wall of flame, and so was the Barbican. They ended up having to go all the way to Bishopsgate after all, and by the time they reached Creed Lane, the burn victim had died.

“Young woman in her twenties,” the incident officer said, shaking his head. “Flames jumped the lane.”

He indicated the body that lay in the street, covered with a gray blanket. “That coulda been you if I wasn’t navigatin’,” Alf said to Eileen.

“She should have been in a shelter,” the incident officer said. “She’d no business being out in this.”

“Can Alf and me go look at the body?” Binnie asked.

“No,” Eileen said. They had no business being out on the streets in this either. “Is there a shelter near here?” she asked the officer. “These children—”

“You can’t leave us here,” Alf said. “We’re your assistants.”

“But your mother will be worried about you—” Alf said, “We ain’t—”

Binnie cut him off. “Mum ain’t ’ome. She’s at work.”

“And if you make us go to a shelter, who’ll tell you ’ow to get back to St. Bart’s?” Alf asked.

He was right. She wouldn’t have a prayer of getting the ambulance back to the hospital without him. She was completely disoriented in the smoky fog, and Dr. Cross was even worse. “No sense of direction, even in the daytime, I’m afraid,” he’d said on the first trip. “That’s why I never learned to drive.”

“You can leave us behind in some shelter,” Binnie said, “but you can’t make us stay there.”

She was right, and God knew what the two of them would do or where they’d go if they weren’t with her. “Get in the ambulance,” Eileen said, and went over to Dr. Cross and the incident officer.

The doctor was speaking on a field telephone. As she came up, the incident officer said, “Are you injured, miss?”

“Doctor,” he said, turning to Dr. Cross, “this young lady is—”

“I’m not injured. I’m Dr. Cross’s driver.”

Dr. Cross took the receiver from his mouth and said, “I’ve just been in contact with Moor Lane Fire Station. They’ve a fireman in Alwell Lane with burns and a broken leg. Guy’s Hospital was supposed to send an ambulance, but they can’t. The hospital’s on fire, and they’re busy evacuating their own patients.” He handed the telephone back to him and turned to Eileen. “We need to go pick up the fireman.”

He started for the ambulance.

“Wait,” Eileen said. If she could phone the fire watch and get a message to John Bartholomew, she could tell him they were trying to get to him and to wait till they arrived.