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women might bring it up again, but now they were solely focused on buying a pair of elbow-length gloves. It took them nearly an hour to decide on a pair, and when they left, Mike and Eileen still weren’t there.
Which is good
, Polly thought.
It means the chances that they didn’t hear the siren are excellent
. But it was after two. Where
were
they?
    Mike heard a newsboy shouting the headline “Five Killed at Padgett’s” and went to the morgue to see the bodies
, she thought worriedly, but when Mike and Eileen arrived half an hour later, they didn’t say anything about fatalities or Padgett’s. They
had
been delayed at Theodore’s.
    “Theodore didn’t want me to go,” Eileen explained. “He threw such a tantrum I had to promise to stay and read him a story.”
    “And then on the way back we went to the travel shop Eileen had seen, to try to find a map,” Mike said, “but it was hit last night.”
    “The owner was there,” Eileen said, “and he said there was another shop on Charing Cross Road, but—”
    Miss Snelgrove was eyeing them disapprovingly from Doreen’s counter. “You can tell me when I get home,” Polly said. She gave them the coats, her latchkey, and Mrs. Leary’s address. “I may be late,” she added.
    “Should we go to the tube station if the raids begin before you come home?” Eileen asked nervously.
    “No. Mrs. Rickett’s is perfectly safe,” Polly whispered. “Now go. I don’t want to lose my job. It’s the only one we’ve got.”
    She watched them depart, hoping they’d be too busy settling in to their new accommodations to discuss Padgett’s or daytime raids with anyone. She’d planned to go to the hospital tomorrow to try to find out if there really had been five fatalities, but if the deaths were in the newspapers, it couldn’t wait. She’d have to go tonight, and poor Eileen would have to face her first supper at Mrs. Rickett’s alone.
    But she might as well have gone straight home. She couldn’t get in to see Marjorie or find out anything from the stern admitting nurse, and when she reached the boardinghouse, Eileen was sitting in the parlor with her bag, even though Polly could hear the others in the dining room. “Why aren’t you in there eating supper?” Polly asked.
    “Mrs. Rickett said I had to give her my ration book, and when I told her about Padgett’s, she said I couldn’t begin boarding till I got a new one, and Mike wasn’t here—”
    “Where is he? At Mrs. Leary’s?”
    “No. He arranged things with her and then went to check a travel shop in Regent Street and then fetch his clothes from his old rooms, but he said he’d be late and not to wait for him, to go ahead to Notting Hill Gate and meet him there. When do the raids begin tonight?” she asked nervously.
    “Shh,” Polly whispered. “We shouldn’t be talking about this here. Come up to the room.”
    “I can’t. Mrs. Rickett said I wasn’t allowed to till I’d paid her.”
    “
Paid
her? Didn’t you tell her you were moving in with me?”
    “Yes,” Eileen said, “but she said not till I’d given her ten and six.”
    “I’ll speak to her,” Polly said grimly, picking up Eileen’s bag. She took her up to the room, left her there, and went down to the kitchen to confront Mrs. Rickett.
    “When I moved in, you said I had to pay the full rate for a double,” Polly argued. “It shouldn’t be extra for—”
    “There’s plenty as wants the room if you don’t,” Mrs. Rickett said. “I had three Army nurses here today looking for a room to let.”
    And I suppose you plan to charge them three times the rate for a double
,Polly almost snapped, but she couldn’t risk getting them evicted. Eileen would already have given Theodore’s mother this address, and Mrs. Rickett wasn’t the type to tell a retrieval team where they’d gone if they did show up. Polly paid the additional ten and six and went back upstairs.
    Miss Laburnum was just coming out of her room, carrying a