To avoid submarine and air attack in the Mediterranean, Randolph Churchill’s ship to Egypt took a long route around Africa, reaching the Suez approach only after thirty-six days. Bored during the voyage, Randolph plunged into nightly gambling. He first lost heavily in two evenings, then ran his total debt up to £3,000, including £1,500 owed to Peter Fitzwilliam. Randolph sent Pamela a telegram telling her to pay the men somehow, in small installments if necessary, and begged her not to tell Winston or Clementine Churchill.

Pamela, already believing she was pregnant again, was shocked by the scale of the debt and saw it as proof that she could no longer rely on Randolph. The crisis made her confront the weakness of the marriage and the fact that she alone would have to protect her own future and her son’s. Unsure what to do and unwilling to go to her in-laws, Pamela turned to Lord Beaverbrook, a powerful friend who admired her and valued the information she could provide from the Churchill circle.

Pamela drove to London, met Beaverbrook at the Ministry of Aircraft Production, and confided both the gambling disaster and her marital troubles, insisting that he keep them secret from Churchill and Clementine. She asked for a year’s advance on Randolph’s salary from the Evening Standard, hoping that would solve the immediate problem. Beaverbrook refused to advance Randolph any money, but then offered Pamela a personal gift of £3,000 instead. Because Pamela sensed that accepting such a gift would place her under Beaverbrook’s control, she refused. Beaverbrook then proposed a different arrangement: Pamela’s son and nanny could stay at his country house while Pamela moved to London and worked.

Pamela accepted. She rented out her house in Hitchin, took a top-floor room at the Dorchester with Clarissa Churchill, and quickly sought paid work. At a luncheon at 10 Downing Street, Pamela mentioned her need for a job to Sir Andrew Rae Duncan, and within a day she was employed in the Ministry of Supply helping establish hostels for munitions workers posted away from home. Living on limited means, Pamela improvised constantly, eating breakfast at the hotel, lunch at the ministry, and hustling dinner invitations from friends or at No. 10. During air raids, Pamela and Clarissa often sheltered in the Dorchester suite of Australian prime minister Robert Menzies.

While building this new life, Pamela still had to hide from her in-laws why she had suddenly left her child, separated from Randolph, and taken a job in London. To raise money, she sold wedding presents, including jewelry. In the midst of the upheaval, Pamela lost her pregnancy and believed the stress had caused it. By the end of the chapter, Pamela knows her marriage is finished, even as she begins to feel a new independence on the eve of her twenty-first birthday. The chapter closes by hinting that a new romance will soon begin.