“Benzene,” Miss Snelgrove said promptly, “though it looks as if it’s soaked through.”

She sent Eileen up to Housewares for a bottle of the cleaning fluid and set Polly to lettering placards for the New Year’s sales while she went to fill in for Sarah.

Polly spent the rest of the day printing “Special New Year’s Markdown” and worrying about why Mike didn’t come and about his burned arm and what they were going to do after tomorrow.

As of January first, they wouldn’t know where and when any of the raids were or what was safe, except for Townsend Brothers and Notting Hill Gate. She assumed Mrs. Rickett’s and Mike’s boardinghouse were, too, though Badri hadn’t said whether the list of allowed addresses was safe for the duration of the Blitz or only till the end of her assignment. But Mr. Dunworthy had been so insistent that she stay in a tube station which hadn’t been hit at all that he was unlikely to have let her stay in a boardinghouse that had been.

But unlikely wasn’t certain, which meant they’d best spend their nights in Notting Hill Gate—and hope they got there before the raids began.

Which was impossible with the short winter days. The sirens routinely went before five. And Mike’s job took him all over London, and there were daytime raids to worry about. And UXBs and dangling parachute mines. And the fact that by closing time Mike still hadn’t shown up.

Where was he? And what if he got blood poisoning in his burned arm? Or caught pneumonia? Though that at least she could do something about, and after work she and Eileen went straight to Notting Hill Gate to speak to Mrs. Wyvern about a coat.

She wasn’t there. “She and the rector are helping with a fund-raiser for families who’ve been bombed out,” Miss Hibbard told her.

“Do you know where?” Polly asked. There weren’t any raids tonight, so she could go find her, but she hadn’t told Miss Hibbard the location of the fund-raiser.

I’ll have to ask Miss Laburnum, Polly thought. “Did she say when she was coming over?”

“She has a bad cold,” Miss Hibbard said. “I told her she should stay at home. The station’s so drafty and cold.”

It was, and the emergency staircase was even icier. When Mike finally arrived, Polly and Eileen took off their coats, and the three of them huddled together under them as Mike told them where he’d been, which had apparently been in every tube station in London, with no luck. “I should have gone to St. Paul’s Station as soon as I got to the cathedral,” he said. “If I had—”

“You still couldn’t have caught him,” Polly said.

“I’ll figure out a way to get you out of here before your deadline, Polly,” he said fiercely.

“What about the retrieval team?” Eileen asked. “You still might be able to find them,” and Polly realized that in all the excitement the night before, they hadn’t told her what had happened.