“You look lost,” George said. “Sure you can’t use my help?”

“Positive,” Thomas said, pushing past him.

George easily kept pace. “What’s the hurry, Tommy? Where you headed?”

“Home.”

George reached into his pocket. “Tough to buy a train ticket with no money unless, of course, you were planning to sell this.”

Thomas stopped. His eyes widened with shock at the medals dangling from the necklace held between George’s fingers. He reached up and felt around his bare neck. “Where did you—? How—? When?”

George shrugged. “Just one of my many talents.”

The surprise in Thomas’s eyes hardened into anger. He lunged for the necklace, but George pulled it out of reach.

“They don’t look to be worth much,” he said, inspecting the medals.

“Don’t touch those!” Thomas screamed.

George spit on his thumb and worked the saliva in small circles into the raised, tarnished surface of Saint Joseph. “Religious, eh? Well, your prayers have been answered, Thomas Sullivan. Think of me as your guardian angel.”

“That’s my brother’s! Give it back!” Thomas jumped for the necklace, but George lifted it higher.

“Only if you listen to my proposition.”

“I don’t want to listen to anything you have to say, you lyin’ thief!”

George shook his head. “That hurts, Tommy, and here I thought we were becoming mates.”

“I’d never be mates with someone like you. Now give me my necklace or I’ll scream.”

George spotted a bobby rounding the corner. He’d had run-ins with the handlebar-mustached cop many times over the years and couldn’t afford to have another today. He had an appointment to keep. Pulling his cap lower, he held out the necklace. “I was just trying to help.”

Thomas grabbed it. “I don’t need help from the likes of you.” Securing the chain around his neck, he hurried in the direction he hoped would lead him back to Trafalgar Square.

“My mistake,” George yelled after him as he lit his last cigarette. “I thought you needed to get to the Western Front.”

Thomas stopped, and George smiled.

FOUR

TWO WEEKS AFTER he’d arrived in London, Thomas finally made his way back to Charing Cross train station, this time at a full sprint.

He struggled to keep pace with George running ahead of him, but the mustached bobby with the truncheon charging after them kept Thomas pushing through the hitch in his side. The army uniform he wore did little to help his progress. Two sizes too big and three inches too long, it tripped up his every step. Gripping his waistband with one hand and his army kit bag with the other, Thomas hiked up his trousers and hurried to catch George.

He still couldn’t believe he was headed to the Western Front. Two weeks earlier, when he’d followed George through the back alleys of London to Dorset Street, he’d feared the street urchin planned to sell him to some factory owner. When they’d reached Dorset Street, they were greeted by a man in a suit and bowler hat. After George whispered something in the man’s ear, the man had dropped a couple of coins in George’s outstretched hand, and then, without asking Thomas a single question, the man led the boys into a building where several other recruits waited. Thomas recognized many from Trafalgar Square. Some were old. Some were young. But like him, all had been pointed left by the army recruiter.