No, the librarian hadn’t said that, Eileen had, that day in Oxford. No, that wasn’t right either. But it didn’t matter. Because Polly had it—the idea she’d been pursuing all the way across the wrecked theater. And it all—Talbot and Marjorie and St. Paul’s and the measles and the stiff strap on her gilt shoe—fit together. It all made sense, and she knew it was vital to hold on to it, not to let it drift away, but it was impossible, the sedative was already closing in like fog, obliterating everything.

“Like the spell in Sleeping Beauty,” she tried to say, but she couldn’t. She was already asleep.

There just isn’t any way we’re gonna live through this thing.

—NAVIGATOR LIEUTENANT LOU BABER,
467TH BOMBARDMENT GROUP

Croydon—October 1944

“WE WEREN’T KILLED,” ERNEST TRIED TO SAY TO MR. JEPPERS. “The V-1 didn’t kill us.” But he couldn’t find the editor in the smoke. It billowed up blackly around him.

They must have hit the Arizona, he thought, coughing, trying to see out across the deck of the New Orleans.

But that couldn’t be right. I never got to Pearl Harbor, he thought. Dunworthy changed the order of my assignments. Oh, God, I’m still at Dunkirk. My foot …

But that wasn’t right either, because he was lying down. There hadn’t been room on the boat to lie down. He’d had to stand up, mashed against the rail the whole way. And the smoke was too thick for it to be Dunkirk.

He couldn’t see anything. It was completely dark. He must be belowdecks. He could see flames through the smoke and hear fire bells. They’re going to an incident, he thought, and remembered the V-1. I hope it didn’t damage the printing press. I’ve got to get that picture of St. Anselm’s in. And take a photo of this incident.

He looked around, trying to see if the name on the newspaper office was still there. If it was, Cess could crop off the word “Croydon,” and they could say it was the Cricklewood Clarion Call. But the fire wasn’t bright enough to light more than the few feet beyond him, and there were no landmarks there, only bricks and broken timbers shrouded by orangish dust. It hadn’t been smoke. It was plaster dust. That was why it was so choking, why he couldn’t stop coughing. He had to try several times before he managed to say, “Mr. Jeppers! I need a flashlight so I can look at your sign!”

Mr. Jeppers didn’t answer. He can’t hear me for the fire bells, Ernest thought. They got very loud and then stopped, and he could hear doors slamming, and voices.

Perhaps they had a flashlight. “Hullo!” he called to them, and stopped to cough. “Do you have a flashlight?”

But they must not have heard him because they were walking away from him. “No, over here!” he shouted—a mistake. It caused him to suck in a huge amount of plaster dust and choke.