Let’s hope they’re not trapped there like we are here, Polly thought. They might end up being guillotined.

“I feel so stupid, not being able to remember,” Eileen said.

“You had no way of knowing it was important,” Polly reassured her. “We’ll find the name of the airfield tomorrow when I buy the ABC.”

“Or your drop might have opened,” Eileen said, cheering up. “And Mike will be waiting for us outside the station so we can all go through together.” But when the all clear went at five, he wasn’t there or at Mrs. Rickett’s.

“He very likely went back to Mrs. Leary’s to sleep when the raids ended,” Polly said.

“Should we go to the drop to check?” Eileen asked.

“No, there are too many people about in the morning. And we need to get you a ration book before I go to work, so you can begin eating at Mrs. Rickett’s.”

But applying for a new ration book required an identity card, which had also been in Eileen’s handbag, and since she’d been living in Stepney, she couldn’t apply for a new one at the local council office. She had to go to the one nearest to where she’d been living.

“Which is where?” Polly asked the clerk at the Kensington council office.

“In Bethnal Green.”

“Bethnal Green?”

“Yes,” the clerk said, and told them the address.

“Are there raids in Bethnal Green today?” Eileen whispered as they left the counter.

“No,” Polly said.

“But you looked so—”

“I thought it might be where Gerald had said he was going. It begins with a B and has two words.”

“No, I’m almost certain the second word began with a P.”

Polly sent Eileen off and hurried to work and up to the book department, but the railway guide was no longer there. “A man from the Ministry of War came in last week and took it,” Ethel said.

“How all occasions do inform against us,” Polly thought. “Would you have a railway map, then?”

“No, he confiscated those as well. To keep them from falling into German hands. You know, in case of invasion. Though if they’ve got as far as Oxford Street, I shouldn’t think they’d need maps, would you?”

“No,” Polly said, but that wasn’t what worried her. What worried her was that the Ministry of War had come in last week. What did they know that had made them think invasion was coming now? Hitler had called off Operation Sea Lion at the end of September and postponed the invasion till spring.

What if he didn’t? Polly thought. What if this is a discrepancy?

It could be a disastrous one. By spring he’d decided to abandon the invasion altogether so he could concentrate on attacking Russia. If instead he invaded now …

“Are you all right?” Ethel asked her.

“Yes. If you haven’t any railway maps, what about an ordinary map of England?” she asked.

“No, he took those as well. I take it someone in your family’s a planespotter?”