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It does.

I unlock the door and spill out into a room so dazzling I shrink back. I hear Peggy calling me from a great distance. I try to call back, but nothing comes out. I roll onto my side to push myself up again when I hear footsteps racing close.

“Gemma! What happened? Are you alright?” I feel her lift me and wrap her arm firmly around my shoulders. “We’ve got to get you out of here. We’ve got to get help. Can you walk?”

I nod—at least I try to nod, but I’m unsure if any motion happens. With Peggy’s arm tight across my shoulders, we make our way downstairs. There’s a fire in the hearth. Or there was. The hearth is filled with orange and red ash, bright, like what results from paper rather than wood being burned. Atop the table, all the papers are gone.

“Who started the fire?”

Peggy shifts beside me. “It was going when I came in. Did you see someone?” She pulls away and I sense she’s looking around. “Is someone else here, Gemma?”

I shake my head and it screams in protest.

Peggy grips me tight again. “Well, someone was here. I doubt you did that to yourself.”

She goes before me down the narrow steps to the kitchen, and I feel like I fall step by step towards her. “How bad is it?”

“Bad enough I need to get you help. Come on.” She pulls me close again, and we make it out into the alley. Before I’m fully aware, we’re on the street.

Peggy sets me on the steps of some building and says, “I’m going to the telephone box to call for help. Wait here.”

I slump against the wall, my back cutting into the concrete of the stair above and my shoulder resting against cool brick. I try to rest my head there as well, but even the lightest touch hurts, almost as if my brain is swishing against the side of my skull.

I tentatively reach up and touch the top of my head. My hand comes away sticky with blood. Closing my eyes, I wait.

Chapter 24

The light is overpowering. I try to open my eyes and feel only fluttering. The bulbs are too glaring and everything is blurry, dazzling, and chaotic. I tell myself to remember to ask Mr. Hastings to change the bulbs throughout the store. Customers won’t want to shop in such harsh light. I hear a curtain pull across a rod. It’s so obvious that’s what it is, and yet I can’t figure out where it is. There are no curtains in the store.

The light grows brighter. Even through closed lids—at least I think they’re closed—I try to move away from it, but nothing will move. My hands, my legs. I pull in a panicked breath as something firm presses against my shoulder.

“Stop struggling. You’re safe. Open your eyes, dear. The doctor needs to examine you.”

The voice is tender, but there’s steel beneath it, and that’s what I respond to. It’s not a voice you disobey unless you want your knuckles rapped with a ruler. Miss Keene was fond of doing that in primary school, and I fleetingly wonder how she’s found me here. I struggle to obey her, but the blinding light makes it impossible.

The light vanishes.

Something heavy within my chest releases and my eyes drift open. The room is stark and clean, the ceiling painted white and the walls in the palest yellow. There is a table beside me. More like a metal tray on stilts, and all sorts of instruments and tools lie upon it.

“Where am I?” I say to the ceiling.

“Oxford Hospital, dear.”

The voice pulls my attention lower, to a woman dressed in white with a nurse’s cap atop her grey hair. “You took quite a blow. Now lie still and do what the doctor says.”

She nods across me rather than to me, and that sends me searching about for someone new. He stands on the other side of me. A man, perhaps only a few years older than I am, watches the nurse with amusement. He drops his gaze to mine.

“Yes,” he says with mock gravity. “Do exactly as I say.” He leans close with a tiny torch and directs me to shift my eyes this way and that, mumbling the entire time. I struggle not only to obey his directions but to keep my eyes open as well.

“Good. Good.” He straightens again. “You have a concussion, but I’m surprised with the hit you took that it’s not more severe. Hardheaded, are you?”

“Perhaps.” I understand he’s trying to be humorous, but I don’t have the energy to reply in kind.

I sense he gathers his joke fell flat because he clears his throat and continues in more clipped and serious tones. “You’ve got thirteen stitches, which will come out in ten days, and you need to rest. But I don’t see why, if you don’t get sick again, you can’t go home tomorrow.”

“I got sick?” The nurse nods vigorously. “I don’t remember that.”

“It’s very common with such injuries. Which is why we’ll keep you for one night’s observation.” The doctor addresses the nurse. “You may send in her friend.”