their savings. In September, they returned to London, to a room in the Marble Arch area, but could not settle into a regular life. The opportunity to escape came in the form of an windfall from a Mitford trust fund, which on Mitford's twenty-first birthday provided a sum of £100: enough, they decided, to purchase cheap tickets for America with some to spare. On 18 February 1939, after throwing a farewell party for their friends, the pair left England for good, aboard the SS Aurania, their destination being New York. America, war and disappearance In New York, the Romillys settled in a small Greenwich Village apartment. Mitford found a job in a New York fashion house, and Romilly attempted without success to work as a freelance journalist. Eventually, he found a position in an advertising firm, Topping & Lloyd; the post, a well-paid sinecure, lasted until August 1939 and enabled the couple to acquire a second-hand car and sufficient capital to embark on a tour of America. In Washington, DC, Romilly signed a contract with The Washington Post to provide a series of articles recounting their adventures under the title "Baby Bluebloods in Hobohemia". The winter of 1939–1940 was spent in Miami, where Romilly borrowed $1,000 to acquire the licence to run the Roma bar. The plan was to continue the tour in the spring, westward, Romilly hoped to find work on a ranch before he moved to Hollywood and finally Chicago. However, by May 1940, the war news from Europe (the Second World War had broken out in September 1939) was serious enough for the Romillys to abandon their tour and return to Washington, where Romilly volunteered for service with the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). Romilly departed for Canada to begin training, first at Toronto and later at Regina, Saskatchewan, while Mitford remained in Washington, pregnant with her second child (a daughter, Constancia, was born on 9 February 1941). Meanwhile, Romilly's training did not run smoothly. In November 1940 he was disqualified from aircrew duties because of a previously-undetected radical mastoid and discharged from the RCAF. However, he obtained an immediate reinstatement to train as an air observer at Malton, Ontario. In the summer of 1941, on the completion of his training, he was posted to England, where he was attached to No. 58 Squadron RAF as a navigator with the rank of pilot officer. On 30 November