starting across the floor in the opposite direction, but Alf and Binnie dug in their heels and refused to move. “We’re ’ungry,” Binnie said.
“I told you—”
“So ’ungry we might say something we ain’t s’posed to,” Alf said.
“Like Lady Caroline didn’t really send you.”
Why, you wretched little blackmailers. But she didn’t have time to argue with them. Striped Pants was coming this way. “Very well, I’ll take you to Lyons for lunch,” she whispered. “After I finish here.”
“Lunch and a sweet,” Binnie said.
“Lunch and a sweet. If you help me find my cousin.”
“We will,” Alf said, and they were as good as their word. When Striped Pants asked Eileen if he could assist her, Alf said promptly, “We’re Lady Caroline’s evacuees,” and looked appropriately pathetic.
And what do I do when I get there? Eileen wondered, half sorry she’d invented the evacuee story. Now she couldn’t ask the shopgirls if Polly worked here, and what excuse could she give for not buying anything when they reached Children’s Wear?
But Alf came through for her. “Eileen, I feel like I’m gonna be sick,” he said, clutching his stomach, and Striped Pants led them hastily to the ladies’ lounge instead.
Once inside, Alf said, “I know a better way to go up and down without no floorwalker seein’ us.”
A floorwalker, that was what Striped Pants was.
“Come on,” Alf said, and led her—with Binnie acting as lookout— over to a door marked Stairs and through it into a stairwell. Eileen followed them, trying not to think about why he and Binnie were both so familiar with department stores and revolving doors and lifts. Blackmail and shoplifting.
But she had to admit using the stairs was a stroke of genius. It was possible to stand inside their windowed doors and survey the entire floor before emerging. If Polly had been there, Eileen would have seen her.
But she wasn’t. Eileen searched all six floors, including the basement, part of which had been fitted up as a shelter, but there was no sign of her. “Can we have our lunch now?” Binnie begged.
“And a sweet,” Alf added.
“Yes,” Eileen said, steering them out of the store and next door to Lyons. “You’ve earned it,” though when she saw the prices she regretted agreeing to the sweet. “No, you may not have the four-course meal,” she told Alf, who had found the most expensive thing on the menu. “I said lunch.”
“But it’s already past three,” Binnie said. “We should get lunch and tea.”
“Past three?” Eileen said, looking over at the clock, but Binnie was right. It had taken the better part of the afternoon to search John Lewis. She’d planned on doing Padgett’s after the children ate, but it was even larger than John Lewis, and she had to deliver Alf and Binnie or be stuck with them for another night. And by the time she got them to Whitechapel and came back, the raids would be starting.
She hurried them through their lunch and pudding, out of Lyons, and back up the street toward Oxford Circus. “Marble Arch is nearer,” Binnie said, pointing in the other direction.
She was right. Marble Arch station was only a short distance from Lyons and an even shorter one from Padgett’s. Eileen made a mental note to use Marble Arch when she came back.
If she had time to come back. What if their mother’s still not there and I have to take them back to Theodore’s with me? Eileen thought, waiting on the platform for their train. But when they reached Gargery Lane, she was—a blowsy woman in a frayed silk kimono who’d clearly been awakened by Eileen’s knocking. Her blond pompadour was mussed and her makeup smeared.
“What’re you two doing here?” she demanded when she saw Alf and Binnie carrying the luggage Alf had just retrieved from the bombed house. “Threw you out, did they?”
Eileen explained about the manor being taken over, but Mrs. Hodbin wasn’t interested. “Have you got their ration books?”
“Yes,” Eileen said, handing them over. “They both had the measles this summer, and Binnie was very ill.”
But Mrs. Hodbin wasn’t interested in that either. She snatched the ration books, ordered Alf and Binnie inside, and banged the door shut.
Eileen stood there a moment, feeling oddly… what? Cheated, because Mrs. Hodbin hadn’t let her say goodbye to them? That was ridiculous. She’d been trying for the last three days to rid herself of them. And now you’re free to go find Polly and her drop