“Eileen—”

“Mr. Dunworthy, you said every historian who’s come here has altered events, and they all went back to Oxford. And after you ran into the Wren, you went back to Oxford. So now that we’ve done what we were supposed to do, they should be able to come and fetch us, shouldn’t they? Or our drops should begin working again.” She looked expectantly from Polly to Mr. Dunworthy and back again. “We need to go check them.”

“I’ll go to the drop in St. Paul’s this morning,” Mr. Dunworthy promised.

But after Eileen had elicited a promise that Polly would check her drop on her way to the theater and had left to drive General Flynn, he said to Polly, “She may, of course, be right about the drops—”

“But if she were, Colin would already be here.”

“Yes,” he said, “and the fact that he isn’t very likely means our part in this is not over.”

“I know,” Polly said, thinking of how Major Denewell had told her and the other FANYs the war could still be lost even during that last year.

“More may be required of us before the end,” Mr. Dunworthy told her.

Including our lives, Polly thought.

She had nearly died rescuing Sir Godfrey. The next time she might not make it. Like the countless rescue workers and ARP wardens and firemen who’d died digging people out of the rubble or taking people to shelter or defusing bombs. Or she might simply be killed outright by an HE, as Mike had been, and all the other people who’d died in the Blitz and in hospitals and prison camps and newspaper offices. Casualties of war.

But still even in death, doing their bit. Like Mike. It was his death that had made her go to the Works Board and volunteer to be an ambulance driver and be assigned to ENSA and save Sir Godfrey.

“I know there’s a good chance we won’t make it back,” she told Mr. Dunworthy, and as she did, it struck her that that was what soldiers said when they were leaving for the front.

“But it doesn’t matter,” she said, and meant it. “All that matters is that Sir Godfrey didn’t die and I’m not responsible for losing the war, and that I can see Miss Laburnum and Doreen and Trot without getting them killed. And if I’m killed, I won’t be the only one to die in World War Two. I’m only sorry I got you into this.”

“We got each other into it. And we may yet get out.”

“And if not, we still stopped Hitler in his tracks.” She smiled at him.

“We did indeed,” he said, and looked suddenly years younger. “And we, like St. Paul’s, are still standing, at least for the moment. Speaking of which, when I go there to check the drop, I intend to ask to be taken on as a volunteer. I have always wanted to serve on the fire watch and help save St. Paul’s—”