She paused, tested the words that formed in her mind. No numbers crowded around them, one way or another, to tell her whether they were sound. Just the dull throb of a headache, mixed with the echo of DID’s news. She swallowed and said them. “I’ll go with you. On Sunday. After Mass.”

She couldn’t think of a single person who would greet that proclamation with anything other than an objection. You need to rest or It’s too soon for you to be out like that after . . . They’d all be thinking it was stupid to go and look death in the eye at the hospital when it was still haunting her at home.

But Dot just held her gaze for a moment, and then she nodded. “Thank you. I’d appreciate the company.”

“And you’ll stay at your own flat tonight.” Had she been well enough to think of it, she’d have insisted on it before. “It means the world that you were there for me. But I’m all right now.”

Dot pursed her lips and studied her with the same sort of intensity Margot would have given a particularly tricky equation. “You can stay with me, if you like. As long as you like. I’ve the room, with Aunt Millie not being there.”

Margot moistened her lips and wondered at the tug of temptation.

She’d never been alone. Never. Not one night in all her life to date. There’d always, always been Maman and Papa and Lukas. And then Maman and Papa. And then Maman. Always. Every day, every night.

She didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t—and so she had to be, to keep it from controlling her. Right? Especially now. If she went with Lukas or with Dot and stayed with them, she might never have the strength to go home again. To be alone.

Alone.

She’d always thought she was. Isolated, even in a crowd. Different. Unlike the other girls, unlike the other students. Even unlike the others here, to be honest, who laughed their way from the OB in the evenings and went to their dinner parties or concerts or whatever else engaged them in their “real” lives outside the secrets of Room 40.

She hadn’t been alone, though. Not really. Not before. There’d always been Maman.

Now there was only Margot.

She cleared her throat and met Dot’s eye. “Thanks. And I might take you up on that at some point. But not yet. I need to . . .” Prove herself. To Lukas and to Dot. To Admiral Hall and Lady Hambro.

And to herself. Mostly to herself.

Dot nodded. Stood. Gripped the little paper bag. “The offer stands.”