He’d been wearing civilian clothes, but she rang Orpington and then the morgue there and the one at St. Mark’s to make certain he hadn’t died on the way to hospital.

He hadn’t, which meant he had to have been taken to some other hospital. Unless he was still lying in the wrecked newspaper office.

She rang up Croydon again. “We looked where you told us to,” the FANY who answered assured her, “but there was no one there. He must have been taken to St. Bart’s or Guy’s Hospital for some reason.”

And those were trunk calls, so she’d have to wait and ring them from the post. At any rate, she needed to get back before the nurse came looking for her. She stood up and opened the door of the telephone box.

Stephen was at the far end of the corridor, in front of the matron’s desk, shouting at the matron, who was attempting to block his way. “You’re not allowed on the floor, sir!” she said. “Visiting hours are over.”

“I don’t bloody care when visiting hours are. I intend to see Lieutenant Fairchild.”

Mary ducked quickly back into the telephone box and pulled the door shut behind her. She sat down, put the receiver to her ear, and turned toward the back wall so Stephen wouldn’t see her as he charged past with the nurse in pursuit.

“This is most irregular,” she heard the nurse say, and then the double doors of the ward banged open and shut again. She waited for the sound of Stephen’s being ejected or of the nurse going angrily for help, but she couldn’t hear anything.

She ventured a cautious look out, then crept out and over to the doors to the ward and peeked through the small glass pane. Fairchild was sitting up in bed, looking very young and absolutely radiant. Stephen was sitting on the side of the bed.

Mary glanced back down the corridor and then pushed half the door open a crack so she could hear.

“I only just heard you were here,” Stephen was saying. “A chap I know who’s seeing a FANY in Croydon, Whitt’s his name, told me, and I came as soon as I could. Are you certain you’re all right, Paige?”

“Yes,” she said. “Did they tell you Mary was hurt, too? She has a concussion.”

Oh, don’t mention me, Mary thought, but he said, “Whitt told me. He said it was a miracle you weren’t killed when the V-2 hit.”

“Mary saved my life,” Fairchild said loyally. “If she hadn’t called to me to bring the medical kit, I’d still have been in the ambulance when it hit.”

“Remind me to thank her,” he said, gripping Paige’s hands. “When I think … I might have lost you …”

Mary eased the door silently shut and then stood there, staring wonderingly at it. She’d been so afraid that the reason the net had let her come through and inadvertently muck up their romance was that it had already been star-crossed. That Stephen—or Paige, or both of them—had been killed. It had never occurred to her that it might have been because they had got together in spite of what she’d done.