“Shh, it’s all right,” someone said, and she opened her eyes. A nurse in a wimple and a starched white apron was bending over her, taking her pulse. “You’re in hospital.”

“I lost—” Polly murmured.

“Whatever it is, you can find it later,” the nurse said. “You must try to sleep.”

“No,” Polly said, thinking, It had something to do with detective novels. And Sleeping Beauty. And a horse. “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse …”

“I must see Sir Godfrey,” she said.

“Sir Godfrey?” the nurse said blankly, and Polly thought, They’ve taken him to some other hospital, like the man I tied the tourniquet on in Croydon. Or to the morgue.

He died on the way to hospital, Polly thought. I didn’t save his life after all.

But the nurse was saying, “It was lucky you found him in time. And lucky you knew what to do.”

But we weren’t lucky, Polly thought. I was late getting to Dulwich. Mike missed the bus to Dover. He missed Daphne in Saltram-on-Sea and had to follow her all the way to Manchester, and Eileen came to Townsend Brothers the one day I was gone. And the night of the twenty-ninth, everything had conspired against them—the air-raid warden who stopped them just as they were going into St. Paul’s and the doctor who waylaid Eileen and the fires and falling walls and blocked-off streets. And Alf and Binnie.

“Why is it everywhere I go there are horrible children?” Eileen had asked, but if it hadn’t been for the Hodbins, Eileen wouldn’t have survived after Mike died. And if she hadn’t insisted on taking them in, if they hadn’t insisted on bringing their parrot, Alf and Binnie wouldn’t have got them thrown out of the boardinghouse. They all might have died along with Mrs. Rickett.

“It’s lucky we got thrown out, ain’t it?” Alf had said, and Mr. Humphreys had said, “What luck you came to Saint Paul’s today. He’s here, the man I told you about.” And Mike had said, “It’s lucky that was the only available room in Bletchley, or I’d never have found out what happened to Gerald Phipps.”

“It was lucky the warden heard me in the rubble,” Marjorie had said, and that night in Padgett’s, Eileen had said, “It’s lucky I heard you calling.”

And at some point Polly must have fallen asleep, must have murmured Eileen’s name, because Eileen said, “I’m here,” and when Polly opened her eyes, she was there, and it was morning. A nurse was pulling back the blackout curtains from the tall windows, and sunlight was streaming into the ward.

Polly held her hands up in the light and looked at them. They were open, empty of anything, but it didn’t matter. She hadn’t lost the answer she’d been holding carefully cupped in them. It had been there all along. She had just been looking at it the wrong way round.

“Are you all right?” Eileen asked.

“Yes,” she said wonderingly. “I am.” If I’m right. If Alf and Binnie—