“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.”