Mike closed his eyes, and his hands tightened on her arms, gripping them so hard he hurt her.
“I couldn’t just show up at Dulwich,” she said, trying to make him understand. “I had to arrange to be transferred there, and that meant spending time in a unit in Oxford first. Major Denewell knew virtually everyone in the FANYs. I’d never have got away with lying about my experience.”
“Like you’ve gotten away with lying to me all these weeks?” he said angrily. “You’ve known all along that Denys Atherton came through after your deadline. That even if we found him, it wouldn’t be in time to do any good.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I wanted—”
“Wanted to what?” He shook her. “To spare me?”
Yes. I didn’t want to put you through what I’ve been going through since the night we found each other and I realized your drops wouldn’t open either. I didn’t want you to look the way you’re looking now, the way I felt when I found out, like someone who’s just heard a death sentence pronounced.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated helplessly.
“What else are you sparing me from?” he said furiously. “How many other assignments were you here on that you haven’t told me about? Were you here in 1942, too? Or the summer of ’41? Or next week maybe?” He gripped her arms so hard she cried out with the pain. “Was I there in Trafalgar Square with Eileen?”
“No. I told you—”
“Was I? Missing an arm or a leg, and you decided you wanted to spare me that, too?”
“No,” Polly said tearfully. “I only saw Eileen.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
“Hullo!” Eileen called up from below. “Mike? Polly?”
Polly clutched at Mike’s arm. “Don’t tell her,” she whispered. “Please. She’ll … please, don’t tell her.”
“What happened to you two?” Eileen said, running up the stairs to them. She was carrying a sandwich and a bottle of orange squash. “I thought you said you were coming.”
Mike looked at Polly, then said, “We were talking.”
“About the raids,” Polly said quickly. “We’re trying to fill in the gaps in the list we made. You said Trafalgar Square was hit sometime during the winter. Do you know which month?”
“No,” Eileen said, sitting down on the steps and unwrapping her sandwich. “Do either of you want a bite?”
“No,” Eileen said, sitting down on the steps and unwrapping her sandwich. “Do either of you want a bite?”
Mike didn’t answer, but Eileen didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong. She was preoccupied with the subject of Alf and Binnie. “I do hope they got home all right the other day.”
“I thought you said they could take care of themselves,” Polly said, trying to make her tone light.
“They can. But I couldn’t shake them all night, and then, when I said I was going to take them home, they vanished, and I’ve been wondering why.”
“Because they were afraid you’d discover the thermometers and stethoscopes they’d stolen from St. Bart’s,” Mike suggested.
Eileen didn’t even hear him. “They were both so grubby,” she said thoughtfully.
Polly wondered what that had to do with Alf and Binnie’s running wild in Blackfriars, but whatever the connection was, she was grateful Eileen’s mind was on that and not on them, or she’d have surely noticed how shaken Mike looked.
I shouldn’t have told him, she thought, even if he had already guessed the truth. I should have lied and said I went through in May or April.
He looked so desperate, so … driven. And on their way home after the all clear, he pulled Polly aside to say, “I’ll think of some way to get you out of here before your deadline. Both of you. I promise.”
The next night he met her outside Townsend Brothers after work. “Tell me about the buildup to D-Day,” he said.
“The buildup? But—”
“We don’t know for sure that Denys Atherton came through in March. Mr. Dunworthy may have rescheduled his drop.”
Or canceled it, she thought. Or his drop wouldn’t open, like Gerald Phipps’s, and he wasn’t able to come through.
“Or Atherton may have had to come through early like you did,” Mike said, “so he could be in place when the invasion buildup started.”
She shook her head. “That wouldn’t have been necessary. There were hundreds of thousands of soldiers pouring into the camps. He wouldn’t have been noticed at all.”
“Pouring in where?” he persisted. “Where was the buildup?”
“Portsmouth, Plymouth, Southampton. But it covered the entire southwestern half of England,” she said, and then was sorry. She shouldn’t have made finding him sound so difficult. She didn’t want Mike to decide it was hopeless and do something rash like go to Eileen’s drop, riflery range or no riflery range. Or to Saltram-on-Sea to blow up the gun emplacement on his drop.
But he didn’t speak of doing either. And the next night when he told them he’d thought of a plan, it involved nothing more than taking turns checking Polly’s drop and composing additional personal ads to be put in the
