say, “Don’t worry, you’ll see your mummies and daddies again soon!”
That’s when I realized why there were so many children here. They were being evacuated. Of all the many hundreds of kids in the train station this morning, my friends and I were the only ones arriving. The rest were leaving, being shuttled out of the city for their own safety—and from the look of the winter coats and overstuffed cases some of them carried, maybe for a long time.
“I have to go,” Jessica said, and Olive had hardly begun to say goodbye when her new friend was borne away by the crowd toward a waiting train. Just that quickly, Olive made and lost the only normal friend she’d ever had.
Jessica looked back as she was boarding. Her grim expression seemed to say:
We watched her go and wondered the same about ourselves.
* * *
Inside the phone box, Emma scowled at the receiver. “No one’s answering,” she said. “All the numbers just ring and ring.”
“Last one,” said Millard, handing her another ripped-out page.
“Cross your fingers.”
I was focused on Emma as she dialed, but then a commotion broke out behind me and I turned to see a crimson-faced man waving an umbrella at us. “What are you dallying about for?” he said.
“Vacate that phone box and board your train at once!”
“We just got off one,” said Hugh. “We ain’t about to get on another!”
“And what have you done with your tag numbers?” the man shouted, flecks of spittle flying from his lips. “Produce them at once or by God I’ll have you shipped somewhere a great deal less pleasant than Wales!”
“Piss off this instant,” said Enoch, “or we’ll have
The man’s face went so purple I thought he’d burst a blood vessel in his neck. Clearly, he wasn’t used to being spoken to this way by children.
“I said
The phone went dead. Emma looked up from the receiver, boiling with quiet rage. “If he wants to use the
