She handed one half crown to Alf and held out the other to Binnie.

Binnie didn’t take it. She stood there, looking steadily at Eileen. She was very pale.

“I’ll take it,” Alf said, reaching to grab it.

Eileen automatically closed her fist over the coin, her eyes on Binnie’s white face. “What’s wrong, Binnie? Are you ill?”

“No,” she said belligerently. “I know why you brought us here today. Polly’s here, isn’t she?”

“Polly?” Alf said. “I thought you said she got married to that ARP warden and went to Canada. Where is she?” He began scrambling up the side of the lion’s base.

“That’s why you wore that coat,” Binnie said, ignoring him, her eyes never leaving Eileen’s face, “so she could spot you in the crowd. She’s here, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Eileen said.

“Where?” Alf called down to them. He had climbed up onto the pedestal and was clinging to the lion’s muzzle. “I can’t see ’er anywhere.”

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” Binnie asked. “That’s why you let Alf bring fireworks and why you didn’t care if you got in trouble over the car. Because you’re leaving. You came here to find Polly so you can go back with her.”

“Back?”

Binnie nodded. “To where you came from. I ’eard you talkin’ in the theater. And I seen you. In the woods at the manor,” she said, reverting to her old Cockney speech. “Alf said you was meetin’ somebody in the woods. ’E thought you was a spy. So I followed you. And me and Alf ’eard you talkin’ in the emergency staircase.”

They had always been two steps ahead of her. “Binnie—”

“You were goin’ to lose us on purpose in the crowd, weren’t you?” Binnie said accusingly. “Like in Hansel and Gretel—”

“No. Binnie, I’m not going anywhere.” She reached her hand out to the girl.

Binnie flinched away from her. “Then why did you bring us ’ere?” she said, nearly crying with rage. “Why’d you wear that coat?”

“Because Polly has to see us standing here.”

“So she can come over and get you.”

“No.”

She glanced around at the surrounding crowd. They had no business discussing this here, but no one was paying any attention to them. They were all cheering, laughing, waving flags. “Polly has to see us so everything that’s happened can happen. Because where I come from, this night has already happened, and when it did, Polly saw me in the crowd wearing my green coat. And she saw you, too.”

“And then what?”

And then she went back to Oxford, Eileen thought, and we stood in the quad and talked to Mike and he went to Dunkirk and lost his foot and you got the measles and we went to London and your mother was killed and Mike was killed and Polly and I took you in and we found Mr. Dunworthy and you saved our lives.

“Then what?” Binnie repeated angrily.

“Then nothing. Polly didn’t speak to me. She didn’t take me back with her. She wasn’t even certain it was me she’d seen. And all of that already happened so, you see, I couldn’t go back with her even if I wanted to. Which I don’t, because I want to stay here with you and Alf.”