Or the retrieval team could have been killed on their way to her drop, in that burnt-out bus she’d seen on her way to Townsend Brothers. Or on the way to Backbury or Orpington.

Or what if Colin had come after her when he found out about the increased slippage? He’d promised to come rescue her. What if he’d followed her to Padgett’s? Or been killed in a raid on his way to Oxford Street?

Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. He’d know better than to get himself killed. Besides, if he came here, he couldn’t catch up in age.

But she immediately began thinking she saw him—on the escalators at Oxford Circus after work, in a knot of soldiers, stepping off a train onto the District Line platform at Notting Hill Gate.

It wasn’t him. The soldier she saw was speaking fluent French. The man on the escalator had Colin’s sandy hair and gray eyes, but when he saw Polly looking at him, his answering smile was nothing at all like Colin’s crooked grin, and he was far too old. He was at least thirty, and Polly knew instantly that he wasn’t Colin, but in that first moment, her heart jerked painfully.

When the seventeen-year-old who looked like him stepped off the train, she was in the middle of the rescue scene with Crichton, and she stopped in midline and stared after him till Sir Godfrey said, “We are doing The Admirable Crichton, Lady Mary, not Romeo and Juliet.”

“What? I … sorry, I thought I saw someone I knew.”

“And I thought this misbegotten play was opening two nights from now,” Sir Godfrey grumbled, and kept them rehearsing till the all clear went.

On the way home Eileen asked, “Did you think you saw Mike?”

“Yes,” Polly lied.

“I’m certain he’ll ring us soon. Perhaps he hasn’t found a room yet. Or perhaps he’s having difficulty finding a place to phone from where he won’t be overheard.”

Or his asking about Gerald has attracted attention, and he’s been taken in for questioning, Polly thought, but she had no time to worry over it. The play opened on Friday, and Townsend Brothers was full of customers. Christmas shoppers were already beginning to come in.

Just after Mike had left, Polly had asked Miss Snelgrove if Townsend Brothers planned to hire on extra help for the holidays and, when she said yes, Polly’d told her about Eileen having lost her job at Padgett’s. Miss Snelgrove had hired her on the spot to help on third and then had had to move her up to the book department the next day when Ethel, who’d discussed ABCs and planespotters with Polly, was killed by shrapnel. But even though they weren’t working on the same floor, Eileen was grateful to be working in a department store which wouldn’t be bombed, delighted at being surrounded by so many Agatha Christies, and certain there was an innocent explanation for why Mike hadn’t telephoned yet.

Eileen was the only one who was cheerful. The troupe was nervy about the play, and everyone else was jumpy and ill-tempered from lack of sleep, even though the raids only happened intermittently now. Or perhaps because they did. In those first weeks, the raids had become background noise that it was possible to ignore, but now that they didn’t occur every night, there was constant discussion of whether and when “they” would come and in what nasty new forms—like delayed-action bombs wired to go off as they were being defused or magnetic mines which exploded when a wristwatch came near them—and discussion of what they could do.