And if she was going, she needed to do it now, before the trains stopped for the night. And before the Major and Stephen got here. Stephen had nearly reached the foot of the steps. She gave him one last regretful glance and then looked at the other girls. Their eyes were still on the Major, on whose head an air-raid warden had just plunked a Nelson-style tricorn hat.

“Do you think we’d better flee while we can?” Parrish asked.

“No, it will only make it worse when she does catch us,” Talbot said.

“Perhaps she’s come to celebrate with us,” Reardon said.

“Does she look like she’s celebrating?” Talbot asked.

She didn’t, despite the festive tricorn. I’ll miss you, too, Major, Mary thought, and leaned toward Paige, who was still calling and waving to Stephen, and kissed her on the cheek. Paige didn’t even notice.

Mary edged slowly away from her and then turned, squeezed quickly along the porch to the steps, and down the same way she’d come up, taking her cap off and keeping her head down in case Paige realized she was gone and began looking for her.

If she did, Paige would hopefully assume she’d tried to get down to Stephen and been carried away by the crowd. Which could be true, she thought, reaching the front of the steps.

She set out at an angle across the square in the direction of Charing Cross. Halfway across, she caught a current that swept her in the direction she wanted to go and let it carry her. It looked like it might even deliver her neatly at the entrance to the tube station.

With time to spare, she thought, stopping at the edge of the square to look at her watch.

The little man in the bowler was still in exactly the same place. “Three cheers for Patton!” he shouted, but the “Hip, hip, hurrahs” were drowned out by the approaching beats of the conga line. She pushed through the crowd toward the Underground station. Hopefully, it would be less jammed than when they’d come. Certainly none of these people showed any sign of going home any time soon, and once the train got past Holborn, it should be—

“Come on, ducks!” a burly merchant marine shouted in her ear. He grabbed her around the waist, thrust her into the conga line ahead of him, and forced her hands onto the waist of the soldier in front of her.

“No! I haven’t time for this!” she cried, but it was no use. The marine had an iron grip on her waist, and when she tried to plant her feet firmly on the ground and refuse to go, he simply picked her up and held her out before him.

She was carried remorselessly back into Trafalgar Square and across it by the snaking “dunh duh dunh duh”-ing dancers. They were heading straight back to the National Gallery. “You don’t understand!” she shouted. “I’ve got to get to the Underground station! I must—”