Eileen automatically closed her fist over the coin, her eyes on Binnie’s white face. “What’s wrong, Binnie? Are you ill?”
“No,” she said belligerently. “I know why you brought us here today. Polly’s here, isn’t she?”
“Polly?” Alf said. “I thought you said she got married to that ARP warden and went to Canada. Where is she?” He began scrambling up the side of the lion’s base.
“That’s why you wore that coat,” Binnie said, ignoring him, her eyes never leaving Eileen’s face, “so she could spot you in the crowd. She’s here, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Eileen said.
“Where?” Alf called down to them. He had climbed up onto the pedestal and was clinging to the lion’s muzzle. “I can’t see ’er anywhere.”
“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” Binnie asked. “That’s why you let Alf bring fireworks and why you didn’t care if you got in trouble over the car. Because you’re leaving. You came here to find Polly so you can go back with her.”
“Back?”
Binnie nodded. “To where you came from. I ’eard you talkin’ in the theater. And I seen you. In the woods at the manor,” she said, reverting to her old Cockney speech. “Alf said you was meetin’ somebody in the woods. ’E thought you was a spy. So I followed you. And me and Alf ’eard you talkin’ in the emergency staircase.”
They had always been two steps ahead of her. “Binnie—”
“You were goin’ to lose us on purpose in the crowd, weren’t you?” Binnie said accusingly. “Like in Hansel and Gretel—”
“No. Binnie, I’m not going anywhere.” She reached her hand out to the girl.
Binnie flinched away from her. “Then why did you bring us ’ere?” she said, nearly crying with rage. “Why’d you wear that coat?”
“Because Polly has to see us standing here.”
“So she can come over and get you.”
“No.”
She glanced around at the surrounding crowd. They had no business discussing this here, but no one was paying any attention to them. They were all cheering, laughing, waving flags. “Polly has to see us so everything that’s happened can happen. Because where I come from, this night has already happened, and when it did, Polly saw me in the crowd wearing my green coat. And she saw you, too.”
“And then what?”
And then she went back to Oxford, Eileen thought, and we stood in the quad and talked to Mike and he went to Dunkirk and lost his foot and you got the measles and we went to London and your mother was killed and Mike was killed and Polly and I took you in and we found Mr. Dunworthy and you saved our lives.
“Then what?” Binnie repeated angrily.
“Then nothing. Polly didn’t speak to me. She didn’t take me back with her. She wasn’t even certain it was me she’d seen. And all of that already happened so, you see, I couldn’t go back with her even if I wanted to. Which I don’t, because I want to stay here with you and Alf.”
And because if I did go back, Mr. Dunworthy would have pulled me out and canceled all our drops, and none of this would have happened. Including this VE-Day celebration.
There’d have been no cheering crowds, no church bells, no victory. Binnie would have died of pneumonia and Alf on the City of Benares, and Captain Westbrook would have died waiting for an ambulance, and they would have lost the war.
“When did Polly see you?” Binnie demanded.
“I’m not certain,” Eileen said. “She told me she got to Trafalgar Square around half past nine, and she was only in the square an hour.”
“Then why’d you come get us out of school? Why’d you make us hurry?”
If she lied to her now, Binnie would never trust her again. “Because I hoped that Colin—the man who came to fetch Polly and Mr. Dunworthy that night—might be here.”
“And he’d take you back.”
“No. I told Colin—will tell Colin—where to find us, and I thought tonight might have been when I told him. I thought he might be here, but I don’t know that for certain. I don’t know when I told him. It might be tonight or years from now.”
“And when you tell him, he’ll go back and find everyone at the theater,” Binnie said.
“Yes.”
Binnie frowned at her. “You should have asked him when it was you told him,” she said practically. “And where, so you wouldn’t have to go running about looking for him.”
“That’s true,” Eileen said. “But it doesn’t matter. We’ll find each other in time, and I’ll tell him.”
“Because he had to have found you or he wouldn’t have known where you were, so he couldn’t have come to the theater,” Binnie said.
And why did I assume she wouldn’t be able to understand time travel? Eileen wondered. “Exactly.”
“And that’s why you had to stay here. To tell him.”
