Reardon, five steps above her, leaned back down to shout, “Before we get outside, we’d best settle on a meeting place! In case we get separated!”

“I thought we said Trafalgar Square,” Paige shouted.

“We did,” Reardon shouted, “but where in Trafalgar Square?”

“The lions?” Paige suggested. “What do you think, Douglas?”

That won’t work, Douglas thought. There are four lions and they’re right in the middle of the square, which will be jammed with thousands of people. Not only will we not be able to find the correct lion, but we won’t be able to see anything from there if we do.

They needed an elevated vantage point they could see the others from. “The National Gallery steps!” she shouted up to them.

Reardon nodded. “The National Gallery steps.”

“When?” Paige asked.

“Midnight,” Reardon said.

No, she thought. If I decide I need to go tonight, I’ll have to be there by midnight, and it will take me the better part of an hour to get there. “We can’t meet at midnight!” she shouted, but her voice was drowned out by a schoolboy on the step above her blowing enthusiastically on a toy horn.

“The National Gallery steps at midnight,” Paige echoed. “Or we turn into pumpkins.”

“No, Paige!” she called. “We need to meet before—”

But Reardon, thank goodness, was already saying, “That won’t work. The Underground only runs till half past eleven tonight, and the Major will have our heads if we don’t make it back.”

Half past eleven. That meant she’d need to start for the drop even earlier.

“But we only just got here,” Paige said, “and the war’s over—”

“We haven’t been demobbed yet,” Reardon said. “Till we are—”

“I suppose you’re right,” Paige agreed.

“Then we meet on the National Gallery steps at a quarter past eleven, agreed? Douglas?”

No, she thought. I may need to be gone before that, and I don’t want you waiting for me and ending up being late getting back.