“Well, it’s no wonder your heel got caught. This isn’t the sort of shoe to be clambering about an incident in,” he said, looking down at her gilt shoe, at her other, bare foot, and then at her costume, or what was left of it.

“I had to take off my skirt to make a compress,” she began, but he wasn’t listening.

“She’s injured,” he called to someone else, and when she looked down, she saw that her bathing suit and her hands were both covered in blood.

“That isn’t mine. It’s Paige’s,” she said, and even though it was too late and he was already dead, she told them, “Sir Godfrey has a chest wound. You need to apply direct pressure.”

“We’ll see to him, don’t you worry,” he said, examining her hands. “You’re certain you’re not hurt?”

I have blood on my hands, she thought, watching him dully as he turned them over, looking for cuts. Like Lady Macbeth. “ ‘What, will these hands ne’er be clean?’ ” she murmured.

“Miss—”

“You don’t understand. I killed him. I altered events—”

“She’s in shock,” he said to someone.

“No,” she said. Not shock. Shock was when one didn’t see it coming, like that day at what was left of St. George’s when she realized something terrible had happened, that no one was coming for her. This was different. She had known all along it would end this way.

“Bring a stretcher!” he called.

It’s no use. You can’t save me either, she thought, and wondered dimly why she hadn’t died from the gas, too. That way I wouldn’t be able to do any more damage. I wouldn’t be able to kill anyone else.

“I need to get you over to the ambulance,” he said. “Can you walk, do you think?”

“Yes,” she said, thinking, They must not have had a stretcher. Major Denewell must have borrowed all of them.

“That’s a good girl,” he said, and put his hand under her arm and helped her to her feet. “Here we go.”

But when she tried to walk, she swayed and fell against him.

He grabbed her arm. “Is your leg injured?”

“No, it’s my shoe,” she said. “I’m all right,” but when she tried again, her head spun and she nearly pitched forward. “My head—”

“You’ve breathed in a bit of gas, miss, that’s why you’re dizzy,” he said, easing her down onto the toppled back of a theater seat. “You need to take deep breaths … that’s it.”

He raised his head and called over her to the men gathered around the hole, “Sit here a minute, miss—what’s your name?”

“Mary,” she said, but that wasn’t right. This was the Blitz, not the V-1s. “Viola.”

“Viola, listen, my name’s Hunter. I want you to stay here a moment while I go fetch some oxygen to help you breathe, all right?”

She nodded.

“I’ll be back straightaway,” he said, and went to meet two men coming across the wreckage with a stretcher. He said something and took the stretcher from them, and they clambered back across the rubble. He took it over to the hole, where they were lifting out the section of balcony wall.