Which was true. She was only sorry she wouldn’t get to see Colin again, and anguished over what his failure to rescue her and Mr. Dunworthy would do to him.

It wasn’t your fault, she wished she could tell him. I know you would have come to rescue me if you could.

Sir Godfrey was looking worriedly at her. “Simply because you’ve cheated Death once,” he said, “doesn’t mean he will not try again. I could not bear to lose you.”

“Only because you’d have to find another principal boy,” she said, smiling.

And she seemed to have allayed his fears because he became his old tyrannical directing self again, bellowing at everyone and shouting orders at Mr. Dorming, who’d been recruited into painting sets. Mrs. Brightford’s three little girls had been enlisted, too, and, by the time rehearsals began—and over Polly’s protests—Alf and Binnie.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Polly said when Mrs. Wyvern suggested it.

“It’s an excellent idea,” Mrs. Wyvern said. “The pantomime is being given to benefit the orphans of the East End. What could be better than having actual children from the East End in it? They can be in the christening scene.”

“We’re fairies,” Binnie told Mr. Dunworthy proudly.

“I ain’t,” Alf said. “Girls are fairies. I’m a goblin. And a bramblebush. First Bramblebush.”

“Liar,” Binnie said. “All the bramblebushes are the same. I’m goin’ to wear a beautiful glittery dress and wings.”

If Sir Godfrey doesn’t throttle you first, Polly thought, which seemed highly likely. They teased Nelson, trod in paint, bounced on Sleeping Beauty’s bed, and hit each other with the fairies’ wands and the prop swords.

“Those swords were borrowed from the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre!” Sir Godfrey bellowed at them. “The next miscreant I catch with one will be strung up by his heels.”

Which had no effect on them at all. Polly had to talk Eileen into coming to rehearsals with her to keep them from destroying the theater, and Mrs. Wyvern promptly latched on to her and made her prompter.

“At least when the retrieval team comes, we’ll all be in one place,” Eileen said cheerfully.

She’d refused to give up hope, even though it was obvious by this time that no one had been able to get through. “The bombing of St. Paul’s must be a divergence point,” she said, “and the retrieval team can’t come through till it’s past.”

Nothing happened on the sixteenth or the seventeenth. On the eighteenth, Eileen said, “With us not in Oxford Street anymore and Mrs. Rickett’s house gone and the vicar not in Backbury, they’ve no way to find us. We need to go to Townsend Brothers and give them our new address. Do you think I should write to Lieutenant Heffernan at the training school at the manor?”

It doesn’t matter, Polly thought. If they were able to come, they’d have done it long before this. They know Mr. Dunworthy’s deadline is the first of May. And the weather was supposed to be clear for the next three nights. Perfect bombing weather.