have happened?”
“I don’t know,” Michael said.
I do, Polly thought sickly. She’d known it from that morning at St. George’s when she’d realized the retrieval team should have been outside Townsend Brothers the day before. That was why her knees had buckled-because she knew what their not being there meant. But she’d kept inventing excuses to keep from facing the truth. Which was that something terrible had happened in Oxford, and the retrieval team wasn’t coming.
Nobody’s coming, she thought.
“But if we can’t use any of our drops,” Merope was saying, “what do we do now?”
Alone
London-25 October 1940
“HOW WILL WE GET HOME IF BOTH POLLY’S AND MY DROPS are broken?” Merope asked, trying to shout over the noise on the platform and at the same time keep the shelterers on the adjacent blankets from hearing.
“We don’t know for sure that they are broken,” Mike said. “You said there were soldiers at the manor. They might have been close enough to your drop to prevent it from opening.”
Merope shook her head. “They didn’t come till a month after the quarantine ended.”
“How far into the woods was your drop?” Michael asked. “Could it be seen from the road? Or could one of your evacuees have followed you? What about yours, Polly? Are you sure yours was damaged, or could an air-raid warden have been somewhere where he could see the shimmer? Or a firespotter?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Polly wanted to scream at him. “Don’t you understand what’s happened?”
I’ve got to get out of here, she thought, and stood up. “I have to go.”
“Go?” Michael and Merope said blankly.
“Yes. I’d promised I’d meet some of the contemps. I must go tell them I can’t come.”
“We’ll come with you,” Michael said.
“No. It’ll be faster if I go alone,” she said and fled into the crowd.
“Polly, wait!” she heard him call, and then say, “No, you stay here, Merope. I’ll go get her,” but she didn’t look back. She plowed through the crowd, around outstretched feet, over blankets and hampers, through the archway and down the tunnel, desperate to get away, to find somewhere where she could be alone, where she could absorb what Michael and Merope had just told her. But there was nowhere here that wasn’t jammed with people. The central hall was even worse than the tunnel had been.
“Polly, wait!” Michael called. She glanced back as she ran. He was gaining on her in spite of his limp, and the hall was packed so tightly she couldn’t push through. Where-?
“You there, stop!” someone shouted, and two children shot past her, darting between people with a station guard in hot pursuit. The crowd parted in their wake, and Polly took advantage of the momentary opening to run after them as they raced toward the escalators. The crowd closed in behind her.
The urchins, who looked suspiciously like the boy and girl who’d stolen that picnic basket in Holborn, racketed down the escalator to the next level and into the southbound tunnel with the guard and Polly a few steps behind.
They rounded a corner. “Stop, you two!” the guard shouted, and two men who’d been standing among a group against the wall joined the chase. Polly stepped quickly into the space the men had left, flattening herself against the wall, breathing hard.
She leaned out past the remaining men to look back the way she’d come, but Michael didn’t appear in the stairway. I’ve lost him, she thought. She was safe for the moment.
Safe, she thought dully. We’re in the Blitz, and we can’t get out. And nobody’s coming to get us. She put her hand to her stomach as if to hold the sickening knowledge in, but it was already spilling out, engulfing her.
Something terrible-no, worse than terrible-something unthinkable had happened in Oxford. It was the only possible explanation for her drop and Merope’s drop both failing to open, for their retrieval teams not being here, for Mr. Dunworthy not being here. He would never have left Michael lying wounded in hospital, never have left Merope stranded in the middle of an epidemic, never have left her here knowing she had a deadline. He’d have yanked her out the moment, the instant, he realized Merope’s drop wasn’t working, and he wouldn’t have sent a retrieval team to Mrs. Rickett’s or Townsend Brothers or Notting Hill Gate. They’d have been waiting for her in the passage when she came through that first night. And the fact that they hadn’t been could mean only one thing.
Mr. Dunworthy must be dead, she thought. She wondered numbly what had happened. Something no one had seen coming, like Pearl Harbor? Or something even worse-a terrorist with a pinpoint bomb, or a second Pandemic? Or the end of the world? It had to have been something truly catastrophic, because even if the lab and the net had been destroyed, they could have built a new one, and this was time travel. Even if it had taken them five years, or fifty, to construct a new net, to recalculate their coordinates, they could still have pulled her out that first day, could have pulled Michael and Merope out before the quarantine started, before Michael injured his foot. Unless there was no one left alive who knew they were here.
Which meant everyone was dead, Badri and Linna and Mr. Dunworthy. And, oh, God, Colin.
“Are you all right, dearie?” a round, rosy-cheeked woman across the tunnel from her said. She was looking at Polly’s hand, still pressed against her stomach. “You mustn’t be frightened. It always sounds like that.” She gestured up at the ceiling, from which the sound of bombs was very faintly audible. “The first night I was down here, I thought we were for it.”
We are, Polly thought bleakly. We’re stranded in the middle of the Blitz, and no one’s coming to get us. We’ll still be here when my deadline arrives.
“You’re quite safe,” the woman was saying. “The bombs can’t get us down here-did you find them?” she broke off to ask the guard, who was coming back along the tunnel, looking disgruntled.
“No. Vanished into thin air, they did. They didn’t come back this way, did they?”
“No,” the woman said, and to Polly, “These children, left to run wild…” She clucked her tongue. “I do hope we see an end to this war soon.”
You might, Polly thought. I can’t. I’ve already seen it. And had a sudden vision of the cheering crowds in Charing Cross, of-
That was how you knew, she thought suddenly, before Eileen even told you her drop wasn’t working, how you knew that morning at St. George’s before you even went to Townsend Brothers, before you knew the retrieval team hadn’t come.
Till this moment she’d never made the connection, not even that night Marjorie took her home with her and they’d ended up at Charing Cross. She’d kept the knowledge carefully from herself, afraid to touch it, to even look at it, as if it were a UXB which might go off. Which it was. It was the final proof that in fact the terrible something had happened, that no one had come in time. Unless… oh, God, she hadn’t even thought of that possibility. She’d assumed… but that was even worse…
“Are you feeling ill, dearie?” the woman was asking. “Come, sit down.” She patted her blanket. “There’s room.”
“No, I must go,” Polly said in a strangled voice and darted back down the tunnel and across to the escalators. She had to get back to the platform and ask Merope-
“Polly!” a woman’s voice called from behind her. It was Miss Laburnum, struggling toward her through the milling mob with two carrier bags. She looked flushed and harried, her hair straggling out of its bun.
I’ll pretend I didn’t see her, Polly thought, but the crowd had closed in, cutting off escape.
“I’m so glad to see you’re late for rehearsal as well,” Miss Laburnum said. “I was afraid I was the only one. I went out to Croxley to borrow a butler’s livery from my aunt for our play. I got a lovely costume for when you’re
