“I’ll go with you,” Polly said, and got to her feet, but Mike said, “We’ll catch up with you. I want to ask Polly about something first.”
Eileen nodded and clattered down the steps. The door clanged shut, and Polly braced herself.
“What happened back there at the escalator?” Mike asked.
“Nothing,” Polly said. “I told you, I was worried because she was so late. Not knowing when the raids are has —”
“It was the coat, wasn’t it?” Mike said. “Is that what she was wearing on VE-Day?”
“No. I told you—”
He grabbed her by the arms and shook her. “Don’t lie to me. It’s too important. That green coat was the one she was wearing on VE-Day.” He shook her again.
“Wasn’t it?”
It was no use. He knew.
“Tell me,” he said, tightening his grip. “It’s important. Is that what she was wearing?”
“Yes,” she said, and his grip slackened, as if all the strength had gone out of his arms.
“I kept hoping the fact that she didn’t own a coat like that meant she was there on a different assignment,” Polly said, “that we’d got out after all, and she’d talked Mr. Dunworthy into letting her go to VE-Day later.”
Mr. Dunworthy into letting her go to VE-Day later.”
“It could still mean that,” Mike said. “The coat’s obviously the correct period. Wardrobe could have had one just like it. They could have had that coat, for that matter. Or it could have been someone else you saw. You said yourself you were too far away to be sure it was Eileen. She could have left it behind when we went back through, and it ended up at the Assistance Board again, and they gave it to someone else.”
Or it might have found its way to an applecart upset, Polly thought, wishing she could believe that was what had happened.
“And if she was there at VE-Day because we didn’t get out,” Mike said, “I’d have been there, too.”
Unless you’d been killed, Polly thought.
“If something had happened to us, she’d hardly have been there celebrating.”
“That’s not true. Everyone there that night knew someone who’d died in the war. And you and I could both have been killed a long time before—”
“Or we could all have been pulled out, and she was back to do the assignment she’d always wanted to do. Or maybe she decided not to go back after our drops opened. You know how she’s always wanted to see VE-Day —”
“So she stayed on through four more years of air raids and National Service and rationing to see one day of people waving flags and singing, ‘Rule, Britannia’?”
Polly asked incredulously. “She hates it here. And she’s terrified of the bombs. Do you honestly believe she’d be willing to go through an entire year of V-1s and V-2s for any reason?”
“Okay, okay. I agree that’s not very likely. I’m just saying there are all kinds of explanations for why she—or her coat—was there besides our not getting out. We missed contacting Bartholomew, but it’s not like we’re out of options. There’s still the St. John’s Wood drop, and Dunworthy will be here in May, right? And there are bound to have been historians who were here in 1942 and 1943. And if we can’t find them, we’ve still got Denys Atherton.”
Denys Atherton.
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. The shock of seeing the coat just unnerved me for a moment.” She started quickly down the steps. “Eileen will wonder what’s become of us, and I’m starving, too. Mrs. Rickett outdid herself tonight. She made a sort of dishwater soup—”
He grabbed her arms and pulled her around to face him. “No. You’re not going anywhere till you’ve told me the truth. It isn’t just the coat. It’s something else.
What?”
“Nothing,” she said, flailing about for some excuse. “It’s only that I’m worried that Denys’s drop might not open. Gerald’s didn’t, and the buildup to D-Day may be a divergence point. It was terribly important that Hitler not find out when and where they were invading, and—”
“You’re lying,” he said. “When did you come through?”
“When did I … The fourteenth of September. I was supposed to come through on the tenth, but there was slippage, and I ended up coming through—”
“Not to the Blitz. To your V-1 assignment.”
You can still do this, Polly thought. You can still pull it out. “I told you, the V-1s began on June thirteenth.”
“That isn’t what I asked you.”
“I didn’t make it to Dulwich till after the first rockets hit. I’d intended to be there on the eleventh, and I’d started for Dulwich from Oxford on the eighth of June, two days after D-Day,” she chattered, “but it took me forever to get there. The invasion made travel simply imposs—”
“That isn’t what I asked you either. I asked you what day you came through the net. And don’t tell me June eighth.” He looked at her, waiting, and it was no use.
He’d worked it out on his own.
She took a deep breath. “December twenty-ninth, 1943.”
