She stopped short on the pavement. That was what Mr. Dunworthy had started to say last night when he’d refused to go to St. Bart’s, that the nurses had been very kind to him and that they didn’t deserve to die for it.

She debated giving a message for Mr. Humphreys to the volunteer at the desk, but she wasn’t even sure she had any business being in St. Paul’s. Yet she didn’t want Mr. Humphreys tracking Mr. Dunworthy down out of concern. She settled for giving a note addressed to Mr. Humphreys to a woman going inside and asking her to give it to the verger. And what if even that moment-long encounter was enough to require a correction? Or her conversation with Hattie when she went to the Alhambra that afternoon?

“Did you get that rescue job you wanted?” Hattie asked her when she arrived for rehearsal.

“No,” Polly said.

“Then you can rescue the second act. Here,” she said, handing her a bathing suit with a Union Jack emblazoned on it. “Cheer up. ENSA may not be as heroic as rescue work, but we keep up the soldiers’ spirits and make them forget their troubles for a few hours, don’t we? Singing and dancing can help win the war, too.”

Mr. Tabbitt put her in the show that very night, serving as assistant to a magician. She was very bad at it, but so was the magician, and the main interest of the audience, which consisted almost entirely of soldiers, seemed to be her abbreviated costume.

“Tits and tinsel,” Hattie said. “That’s our motto.”

“I thought it was ENSA: Every Night Sexy Acts,” one of the chorus girls said, flouncing past them in an even skimpier costume as they stood in the wings.

“That’s Joyce,” Hattie said. “Nice, but a bit too fond of the boys.”

A handsome young man dressed as an RAF pilot brushed past them.

“And that’s Reggie,” Hattie said. “Also a bit too fond of the boys. That’s one thing I like about ENSA. One never has to worry about being fondled. Except by Mutchins, our beloved stage manager. Watch out for him. He’s a menace.”

So am I, Polly thought. Like one of those fiendish delayed-action bombs set to go off when someone comes too near.

It took her two days to find the courage to tell Eileen. Polly remembered how sick she’d looked when she’d found out about Polly’s deadline, remembered her refusal to budge from the foot of the escalator when she found out Mike was dead, and was afraid the same thing would happen, but she took the news with an almost frightening calmness. “I knew it had to be bad when you brought him in,” she said. “He’s certain we lost the war?”

“Mr. Dunworthy says there’s no way to be absolutely certain, and there’s a possibility the continuum will be able to correct itself—”

“But it won’t help us.”

“No,” Polly said, feeling like a doctor giving a patient a terminal diagnosis.