A whistling overhead.
“Get down!” Aleida flung herself flat to the roof.
Hugh strained his gaze upward. Where were the bombs falling?
“Hugh!” Aleida tugged on the hem of his coat. “Get down!”
He blinked hard, then dropped to his knees.
A crash of metal and cement to the north, and the roof trembled, bucked beneath him.
Hugh threw himself down between Aleida and the crash.
Had Broadcasting House been hit?
Whistles rent the air, but softer, fading, the stick of bombs working its way west.
Aleida pushed up on her elbows, her hat askew. “Were we hit?”
Hugh had hugged her to his belly, and he released her. “So sorry. I—let me see.” He rose to his feet, and his knees wobbled.
Halfway up the length of the building, a cloud of dust rose from along Portland Place.
Hugh leaned over the railing for a better view. A jagged hole pierced the side of Broadcasting House around the seventh floor, and bits of masonry littered the ground.
“I heard the bomb hit.” Aleida stood back from the railing. “But I didn’t hear an explosion. Do you think it’s a UXB?”
Unexploded bombs created deadly work for the men who removed and detonated them. “Some bombs have time delays.”
“Oh no.”
Hugh backed up and groped for Aleida’s hand. “We—we should leave.”
He spun her around and ran for the stairs. He didn’t want to be trapped in a lift, have the cable severed.
Their feet pounded down the steps, they bumped sides as they whirled around landings, and her hand gripped his like a vise.
At each landing, more people joined them, but Aleida never released his hand.
Rumors floated down the stairs with them. The bomb had come to rest on the sixth floor, someone said. No, the fifth. Near the music library—a woman said she’d seen it with her own eyes.
Hugh guided Aleida through the lobby and out the main entrance. The guard stood aside and stared as dozens of people passed him.
Still, the Luftwaffe droned overhead. Beams searched in vain and antiaircraft fired in vain.
If the public knew how few bombers had been shot down by those guns, how even fewer bombers had been shot down by RAF night fighters ... but that was a story he couldn’t tell. Wouldn’t tell.
Hugh and Aleida crossed Portland Place. Her hand felt small and taut and right in his, and he gave it the slightest squeeze. “May I interest you in sheltering in the Tube?”
“Yes, please.” Her voice came out thready.
He headed up Portland Place toward Regent’s Park Station. Oxford Circus Station was closer, but also lay closer to the bomb falls.
Noise ripped the air before them.
Glass and masonry spewed from the side of Broadcasting House, about five floors up.
“The bomb,” Aleida whispered.
