“We are rather in the way here,” the rector said and led the way back along the crowded platform through the jostling passengers, Bess and Trot holding Polly by the hand.
“It’s not so cozy here as the shelter in St. George’s, I’m afraid,” Miss Laburnum said.
“And it’s rather noisy,” Mrs. Brightford added, “though when the trains stop, it’s a bit better.”
“I like it,” Lila whispered to Polly as they followed the rector. “There’s a canteen and—”
“And lots of nice-looking men,” Viv finished.
They reached the end of the platform. “Now, sit down,” Miss Laburnum said, gesturing to Lila and Viv to make room for Polly, “and tell us all about your adventures.”
Sir Godfrey gently took the mug and sandwich—which she was still unaccountably holding—from her and handed them to Viv. Polly sat down. So did everyone else, moving their camp stools and blankets to form a circle around her. “What happened to you?” Lila asked. “Why didn’t you come back to Mrs. Rickett’s?”
“Tell us everything,” Trot said.
“Aye, Miranda,” Sir Godfrey said. “‘Where hast thou been preserved? Where lived? How found thy father’s court?’”
“She didn’t,” Trot said. “We found her!”
“Hush, darling,” her mother said. “Let her speak.”
“‘Aye, speak, maid,’” Sir Godfrey ordered. “‘Give us particulars of thy preservation, how thou hast met us here who three days since were wrecked upon this shore.’”
She couldn’t tell them she’d spent a night in the drop. Instead, she said the sirens had gone when she was still at work, and she’d had to spend the night in Townsend Brothers’ basement shelter. “And the next morning there wasn’t time to go home before work, and that night it happened again. And when I came home Saturday morning, I saw the church, and they said people had been killed. I thought you were all dead. Who was killed?”
“Three firemen and an ARP warden,” the rector said. “And the entire bomb disposal squad.”
Miss Hibbard shook her head sadly. “Poor brave men.”
“The mine’s parachute had caught on a cornice of the building next to the vicarage,” Mr. Dorming explained. “They were trying to cut it down when it went off.”
“But I still don’t see how you—”
“We’d all been evacuated,” Mr. Simms explained.
“We’d no more than arrived at St. George’s when the ARP warden knocked on the door,” Miss Laburnum said, “and told us we had to leave immediately.”
“Sir Godfrey refused to go without you,” Lila said. “He said you wouldn’t know about the bomb and we must wait till you arrived, but the warden said they’d cordoned off the area.”
“They took us to a makeshift shelter in Argyll Road,” Miss Laburnum said, “and we were no sooner there than it went off. If we’d waited even a few minutes longer—” She shook her head.
“As soon as the raid let up, they sent us here,” Lila said, “and the tube authorities wouldn’t let Nelson in—”
“And Mr. Simms said he couldn’t just leave him outside in the middle of a raid,” Viv put in eagerly.
“Sir Godfrey told the guard he was an official member of our acting troupe,” Mr. Simms said, “so then they had to let him in.” He patted Nelson’s head affectionately.
“We were certain you’d be here,” Mrs. Brightford said.
And she had been, but then she’d gone to Holborn to observe the shelterers.
“Sir Godfrey went to Bayswater and Queensway stations to see if you might have been sent there,” Miss Hibbard said, “but you hadn’t.”
“And then,” Miss Laburnum said, “when you didn’t come back to the boardinghouse the next morning…”
The boardinghouse. She’d told herself the retrieval team hadn’t been able to find her because they’d been killed, that there’d been no one at Mrs. Rickett’s to tell them she lived there. But they weren’t dead. They would have been there to tell the retrieval team. So where were they?
“We feared the worst,” Miss Laburnum said.
So do I, Polly thought, and felt the panic begin to stir again.
“We were afraid there were areas which hadn’t been cordoned off and you hadn’t seen the Danger—Keep Out notices in the dark,” the rector said, “and had come along to the church.”
“And been killed,” Trot said.
“Sir Godfrey insisted the rescue squad search through the wreckage of the entire church,” Lila said.
That rescue shaft I saw wasn’t for them, Polly thought. It wasn’t for Sir Godfrey. They were looking for me.
“They told him it was no use,” Viv said, “that the entire weight of the sanctuary and the roof had collapsed directly onto the shelter, and no one could have