Mr. Humphreys had managed to, and so had London. The day after they’d watched half their city burn down around their ears, Londoners hadn’t sat there feeling sorry for themselves. Instead, they’d set about putting out the fires that were still burning and digging people out of the rubble. They’d repaired water mains and railway tracks and telephone lines, shown up at their jobs, even if where they worked was no longer there, swept up glass. Gone on.

If they could do it, she could, too. “Once more into the breach,” she thought, and stood up and brushed the soot off her coat.

“We need to be going,” she said. She gathered up their cups and saucers, took them inside, set them on the desk next to the half-burned print of The Light of the World, and started out, then went back to look at it again—at the lantern raised to light the nothingness which lay before it, the darkness on all sides, at Christ’s robe smeared with soot from the charred, flaking edge.

She’d expected his face to look as done in, as defeated, as Eileen’s and Mike’s, but it didn’t. It was filled with kindness and concern, like Mr. Humphreys’s.

She fished sixpence out of her bag, laid it on the desk, folded the picture into quarters, put it in her pocket, and went outside.

“We need to go,” she said to Mike and Eileen. “We’ll be late for work. And we must take the ambulance back to St. Bart’s.”

“And get my coat,” Mike said. “And Eileen’s.”

“I need to take the children home first,” Eileen said. “Alf! Binnie!” she called to them.

They were still messing about in the ruins, poking at a smoldering timber with sticks and then jumping back as it crumbled into glowing embers.

“Come along. I’ll take you home.”

“ ’Ome?” Binnie said. The children looked at each other and then up at her. “We don’t need nobody to take us,” Alf said. “We can get there on our own.”

“No, the trains to Whitechapel may not be running, and your mother will be worried to death,” Eileen said. “I want to tell her where you’ve been all night and how much help you were.” She started down the steps toward them.

Alf and Binnie exchanged glances again, then dropped their sticks and tore off down the street, running as fast as they could.

“Alf! Binnie! Wait!” Eileen called, and took off after them, Polly and Mike in pursuit, but they’d already vanished into the tangle of smoking ruins beyond Paternoster Row.

“We’ll never catch them in that maze,” Mike said, and Eileen nodded reluctantly.

“Will they be all right, do you think?” Polly asked.

“Yes, they’re expert at taking care of themselves,” Eileen said, looking after them and frowning. “But I wonder why—”

“They were probably afraid if you took them home they’d have to go to school,” Mike said, and when they reached the ambulance, he peered at the petrol gauge and said, “We couldn’t have taken them home anyway. We don’t have enough gas to get to Whitechapel and back. We’ll be lucky if we’ve got enough to get us to St. Bart’s.”