Penny’s café had always been tucked between a grocery shop and a hardware store, yet Alice searched the streets for several minutes trying to get her bearings and calm her nerves. It was hardly surprising that the area was unrecognizable; with its anti-aircraft guns on one side and the main railway line from Euston on the other, it had never stood much of a chance. Even the silver-tailed barrage balloons at the nearby Lord’s Cricket Ground couldn’t have done anything to deter the Luftwaffe. What surprised Alice was that Penny’s family had stayed instead of going to the countryside, but Penny had insisted she couldn’t leave the community and that Chalk Farm Underground station was as good a place as any to take shelter.

It took Alice a while before she realized she was going in the wrong direction, and she had to retrace her way to the junction of Regent’s Park Road and its familiar row of white houses. She recognized the parade of shops instantly, except enormous chips of granite had been gouged from the curbside, the iron lampposts were dented and most shopfronts were boarded up, the rough edges of hastily sawn planks still visible.

Just across the street, kids played hopscotch outside Penny’s café, socks around their ankles, their noisy shrieks of laughter incongruous with their game. Before Alice had started working at Partridge, she had been a regular visitor here since it was so close to the zoo. But time had slipped away, and she hadn’t seen Penny for a year; she wasn’t even sure which kids were Penny’s.

She crossed the road without looking and peered through the café window; she couldn’t see Penny behind the grime-coated glass. Perhaps she’d been wrong to come, she thought, although she had nowhere else to go, and her friend had been so insistent when she’d telephoned to ask if she could visit, perhaps even stay for a few days.

The café was crammed into the downstairs of a Georgian terraced house, a low set of stairs leading off to another salon at the back while a steeper staircase led to Penny’s family home on the two floors above. There were more tables and chairs than Alice remembered, and the once-full bookshelf across the back wall was now populated with mismatched cups and saucers, china ornaments and jars of dried flowers. Framed photographs of popular actors and sweethearts decorated the walls, some bearing autographs.

Penny stood behind a brass counter, squawking orders at a waitress, her light-brown hair twisted into a loose bun with a pencil sticking through it. “Alice!” she shrieked when she noticed her. “How long have you been here?”

Remembering her new shape, Alice quickly clasped her hands in front of her and attempted to smile. “Long enough to see you haven’t changed—still just as bossy.”