Polly shook her head. “ ‘It is the lark.’ ”

“It isn’t. It’s only—” Eileen held her watch up, trying to see the time, but it was too dark to make out the hands. “There’s still time to get there before he leaves,” she said, though she didn’t see how. The Underground wouldn’t start running till half past six, and even if they could get to Blackfriars, they’d have to climb Ludgate Hill.

Polly was still staring blindly at the sky. “We won’t be able to find him,” she murmured as if to herself. “We’ll be too late.”

“Alf,” Eileen said, “do you think you could find us a taxi?”

“A taxi?” Alf said. “Whattya want a taxi for?”

Wretched child. “We must get to St. Paul’s immediately. It’s an emergency.”

“Why don’t you take the ambulance?” he said, and Binnie came driving around the corner of the hospital.

She leaned out the window. “I thought I better ’ide it so nobody else took it.”

Alf opened the passenger door, scrambled in, and rolled down his window. “Well?” he said. “Are we goin’ or what?”

That won’t be there in the morning.

—FIREMAN, ON SEEING ST. PAUL’S
SURROUNDED BY FIRES,
29 December 1940

St. Bartholomew’s Hospital—30 December 1940

MIKE WOKE UP WITH A SPLITTING HEADACHE, AND WHEN he tried to put his hand to his forehead, a searing pain shot along his arm.

He opened his eyes. His arm was swathed in gauze, and he was lying in a white-painted iron bed in a dimly lit ward. He turned his head to look at the sleeping patient in the bed next to him. It was Fordham, with his arm still in traction. “Oh God,” he murmured, trying to sit up. “How did I get here?”

“Shh,” a pretty, wimpled nurse—not Sister Carmody—said, pushing him back down and pulling the blankets up over him. “Lie still. You’ve been injured. You’re in hospital. Try to rest.”

“How did I get to Orpington?” he asked.

“Orpington?” she said. “You did get a knock on the head. You’re in St. Bartholomew’s.”

St. Bartholomew’s. Good. He was still in London. He must have … but then what was Fordham doing here? He looked over at him, and it wasn’t Fordham, after all. It was a teenaged boy.

“What time is it?” Mike asked, looking over at the windows, but they were completely covered by sandbags piled against them.

“Never you mind about that. Would you like some breakfast?”

Breakfast? Oh, Christ, he’d been out cold the whole night.

“You must try to rest,” the nurse was saying. “You’ve a concussion.”

“A concussion?” He felt his head. There was a painful bump on the left side.

“Yes, a burning wall fell on you,” she said, pulling out a thermometer. “You were extremely lucky. You’ve a burn on your arm, but it could have been far worse.”

How? he thought. I was supposed to be finding John Bartholomew, and I’ve been out of commission all night.

“Eight other firemen were killed in Fleet Street when a wall collapsed,” she said.