Chapter 45

The air-raid siren went off long after midnight.

Osla jerked awake. It took her a moment to remember she was sharing one of the ground-floor bedrooms of Francis’s Coventry house with Lucy. They’d all played backgammon and charades, then turned on the radio and listened breathlessly to reports of joint Allied landings in North Africa. Once Lucy was drooping, and Mab and Francis on the point of going up in smoke if they didn’t get some time alone, Osla suggested heading to bed.

Now the air-raid sirens wailed outside.

“Lucy, wake up—” The little girl was still sound asleep on the other side of the bed. How many air-raid sirens had a child of the East End heard by 1942? Lucy probably didn’t bother waking up for anything less than five hundred Junkers overhead. But Osla hadn’t faced an air raid since the Café de Paris had been blown to pieces all around her, and fear rose thick and foul in her throat as she fumbled for her shoes and flung her coat over her nightdress. Don’t panic, she told herself, scooping up the sleeping Lucy and stumbling out into the pitch-dark corridor.

“Mab? ” Osla called. A bone-humming drone sounded above—were bombers here already? Osla groped to the front door and flung it open. Outside the darkness was thick enough to choke on, pierced by finger-beams of searchlights stabbing at a roiling, reddened sky. Osla saw something metallic flash through one of the searchlights—a plane. A German bomber, piloted by some fresh-faced Luftwaffe pilot who was right now doing his best to blow Osla and Lucy and the rest of Coventry to cinders. She felt a stab of hatred so silver-bright it nearly staggered her, and then she heard footsteps down the stairs, Francis in trousers and shirtsleeves, Mab wrapped in his coat.

“There’s an air-raid shelter a quarter mile down the road, ” Francis said, sounding so blessedly calm Osla’s pulse steadied. “Safer than the cellar. . . ” And they were all piling out through the tangled garden. Francis struggled into his spare coat as Mab tried to take Lucy, but the girl clung to Osla like a limpet, still mostly asleep.

“Leave her, ” Osla gasped. “At least she’s quiet. ” Mab put her arm around Osla, squeezing in fierce, wordless love, and they joined the flood of people thronging the icy street: a child dragging a panicked dog, a woman with a kerchief over rag curls, a man with pajama bottoms stuffed into wellies. It was not really loud yet; it was all labored breaths and shuffling feet, muffled cursing and droning engines. Osla’s stockingless toes scraped inside her shoes; her arms ached supporting Lucy’s warm, solid weight. She could see flares drifting down like fireflies from the planes, lighting the ground for strikes from the air, and she thought of Philip at Cape Matapan, lighting the enemy cruisers for strikes from the sea. As near murder as anything could be in wartime. . .

Lucy stirred muzzily, but Osla tugged the blanket back over her head. “We’re playing a game, darling. You’ve got to keep quiet as a mouse, that’s the game—”

“Almost there, ” Francis said as the crush grew thicker. He had one arm around Mab and his other hand grasped Osla’s shoulder, calm and reliable, and Osla had her panic firmly gripped between her teeth. The imagined air-raid shelter gleamed like a beacon: a cozy underground place where everyone would share blankets, someone would have a flask of whiskey, and maybe they’d sing “Could You Please Oblige Us with a Bren Gun? ” until the all-clear sounded. It would be nothing like the Café de Paris.

Then Francis’s hand tore away from Osla’s arm as a crowd of young men pushed through the throng, shoving ahead at a flat run. Jostled, Osla’s foot missed the curb and slewed sideways. Pain shot clear up to her knee. She fell, managing to twist to one side so she didn’t crush Lucy as the two of them hit the street with a jolt. Osla’s entire body vibrated as though she’d been slammed through the windscreen of a car. Lucy yelped, fighting free of the blanket.

“Lucy! ” Mab’s voice, high and panicked. Osla couldn’t see her friend. The night was black and red, people streaming in all directions.

“Lucy, here—” The world tilted and spun, but Osla levered herself up, lunging to grab hold of the little girl. Her fingers locked round that tiny wrist. “Stay with me, sweetheart—”

A vast percussive whump sounded, and Osla heard the shatter of exploding windows. For an instant she saw the blue flash of the explosion that had torn the Café de Paris apart, torn her dancing partner’s lungs from his chest—and she flinched, fingers springing open.

In that moment, Lucy wrenched away and fled into the night.

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