Grace grinned. How many countless summer days had they lain in the sun-warmed grass, breathing in its sweet scent as they pretended to be in Hyde Park? “It’s only just up the road,” she said with a lift of her brows.

Viv glanced around the brightly lit rows of endless elegant displays. “If we can find the way out.”

Grace craned her neck, searching without success. It took longer than either cared to admit, and they became lost somewhere between the bedding department and braziers, but they were finally able to locate the exit and went up the street into Hyde Park.

What they had been expecting were clusters of deck chairs filled with extravagantly dressed people, the expanse of the Serpentine catching the sunlight like winking diamonds, and a lawn of endless green grass so soft it would tempt them to remove their shoes. They had not anticipated the trenches gouged into the soil like open wounds, or—worse still—the massive guns.

The hulking metal bodies rose taller than a man, supported by wheels so large, they came up to Grace’s waist. A long barrel protruded from each beast, jutting toward the sky, ready to take down any threat.

Grace looked up into the heavy gray clouds, half expecting to see a fleet of aircraft in its murky depths.

“Don’t trouble yourself worrying about Germany, ladies.” An older man paused before them. “Those anti-aircraft guns will shoot them out of the sky before they can touch us.” He nodded with self-satisfied assurance. “You’ll be safe.”

Grace’s stomach clenched and robbed her of any words. Viv seemed similarly affected and merely offered a weak smile. The man touched the brim of his hat and resumed his path across the park with a newspaper under his elbow.

“The war really is coming, isn’t it?” Viv said softly.

It was. They all knew as much, even if they didn’t want to admit it.

Already holidays had been cut short when teachers were asked to return home early to begin preparation for the likelihood of the evacuation of thousands of children from London. If they were planning to remove the children to the country, war would surely be soon upon them.

Still, there was a resignation in Viv’s statement that plucked at a guilty string in Grace’s chest.

“You don’t need to be here, Viv. It isn’t safe. You only came to help me. Because I was too scared to come on my own. You could—”

“Go back to Drayton?” Viv’s lips curled up with mirth. “I’d rather die than go back and bury myself up to the elbows in dirt again.”

We just might, even still. Grace didn’t verbalize the macabre thought, but she did glance back once more at an anti-aircraft gun, dark and ominous where it rose against the afternoon sky.