Adhering to the blackout, she kept the headlights off. The road, barely visible, required her to drive slowly. The countryside was barren. Everyone, it appeared to Susan, was hunkered into shelters. Before she reached Epping, sirens howled. Dozens of searchlights near North Weald Airfield scanned the atmosphere. White beams crisscrossed the clouds. She gripped the wheel. Within moments, the antiaircraft guns fired. Concussive blasts pounded her ears. Flashes of aerial explosions lit up the sky. She drove faster, struggling to keep the truck on the road.

She reached home as the first bombs struck London. Through the windshield, she watched white-hot flares illuminate the horizon. Seconds later, the sound waves hit. Rumbling blasts. The ground, truck, and even her bones seemed to vibrate. She got out, leaving the key in the ignition, and ran to the cottage. The scent of expelled gunpowder filled her lungs. She threw open the door and shouted, “Grandfather!”

Bertie stood from a kitchen chair—placed near a front window—and threw his arms around her.

Susan felt a huge squeeze. “Sorry.”

Bertie looked at her. “Are you all right, my dear?”

She nodded.

“I tried to get the soldiers to help me look for you, but they bloody wouldn’t leave their posts. Cowards.”

“Did the pigeons make it back?” she asked.

“All of them.”

“Any from Source Columba?”

He shook his head, then leaned his weight against the chair. “What happened?”

Susan heard a loud explosion and hesitated. “They blacked out all the road signs.”

Bertie raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

Susan swallowed. “Preparation for the invasion.” She didn’t have the courage to tell him that the coastline was being protected by department-store mannequins.

CHAPTER 33 - EPPING, ENGLAND

CHAPTER 33

EPPING, ENGLAND

Susan stared at her bowl of porridge. Despite her hunger pangs, and the fact that her ribs had begun to protrude like those of a stray dog, she couldn’t bring herself to lift the spoon. She hadn’t slept. The bombing had been extraordinarily heavy. So fierce that she thought there would be nothing left of London, except a hole all the way to Earth’s core.

For much of the night, sirens howled. Guns fired. The earth quaked. With her blanket, Susan curled into a cocoon and prayed, until her knuckles ached—for the safety of Londoners, for Britain to survive, for Ollie to return home. And this morning, she woke to find that only one additional pigeon had returned from France. One out of almost 400 that were still missing. It wasn’t Duchess.

“You must eat something,” Bertie said.

“I can’t.”

“Try,” he said. “We must keep up our strength to win the war.”

Susan thought of Clacton-on-Sea. The fake pillboxes. Mannequin soldiers. For the first time, her hope of winning the war had not just faded; it had been snuffed out. At best, the British would need to find a way to live under Hitler’s rule.

Bertie nudged her bowl. “Be an egg, my dear.”