CHAPTER SIXTEEN
red wire, red string

"Now it came about when he had finished speaking to Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself." —1 Samuel 18:1

Trixie decided the morning after the races that Scarlett Kimber's brand of fun differed quite significantly from her own, and that she had no interest in pursuing it ever again. Her memories of the night previous blurred beginning with the pipe, and all she could recount from thereafter was that Tommy had driven her home and walked her to the door before leaving to head home himself. When she woke, her mouth was dry, and the copy of Wuthering Heights from Kimber's library sat atop her nightstand.

Had she stolen that, or had Tommy? Surely, she would've remembered if she'd been the one to pocket the book, but there was no reason for Tommy to take it on her behalf. Trixie reached over for the book and thumbed through its pages in search of an indication as to how it had been transported from Kimber's mansion to her tenement, but it was untouched. The spine was unbent, she realized. Trixie had been the first to read it.

Well, however it had gotten there, she wasn't going to let it go to waste. Trixie spent Sunday at Church and then at home racing through the remaining chapters—by the time she'd finished, it was time for bed.

Monday saw her back to work—and likely back to seeing Tommy again. She felt like she should be embarrassed about the state he'd seen her in, but everything was so temporary these days. What did it matter what he thought? Soon they'd part, and never see each other again, and she'd marry some dreadfully boring man and waste away raising their children. When she arrived at the betting shop, Tommy hadn't yet arrived, so Trixie deposited her things at her usual seat before approaching the chalkboards. She poked John squarely in the back.

"Morning," she greeted.

He nearly jumped out of his skin. "Jesus, Trixie," he hissed. "It's too early."

She reached over to his breast pocket and plucked the half-full flask from him. "Too early for poking, but not too early to be drunk at work?"

John snatched it away. "Mind your business."

"Yeah, yeah. Have you seen your sister?"

The races had been a distraction—and not even that pleasant of one—but Trixie knew that Campbell would find her soon enough and start demanding answers.

"Not since she ran off with Freddie," said John. "Why?"

"Well, I'm worried," Trixie said. She had no plans to sell Ada out to the cops, or Freddie by proxy, but she needed to come up with something. And if she knew where they were, she could point Campbell in the wrong direction, or at least warn them of his pursuit. "I haven't seen her in so long. She's pregnant, she needs support."

John shrugged. "Yeah, well, not like Freddie's doing much of that. Doesn't fuckin pay to be a communist, does it?"

Trixie hadn't read Marx—not yet—but she wasn't clueless. "No," she said. "No, it really doesn't."

"How were the races?" he asked.

"Not sure. We never even saw the horses."

"You weren't there to see the horses."

She leaned back against the railing that surrounded John's almost-stage, and considered the events of the weekend. Her second fake-engagement, Tommy's dancing, the way Kimber had grinned at her so wolfishly. "Kimber's a pain," she said. "Made Tommy look like good company."

"Well, we knew about Kimber," John replied, unscrewing his flask and taking a swig. "Tommy being good company, though? Ehh...doubtful."

Trixie laughed and looked back out at the betting shop, where the men were opening up safes and pushing coins back and forth. This was her life—she'd watched the women disappear when the war ended, marrying off to men who took their places, but she'd remained. Maybe it was silly to cling to the idea of a life where she was more than a woman; the era that had put her into the workforce was over, and clinging to it any longer was just desperate.

"I've big news," John whispered, an infectious grin on his face.

"Big news?" Trixie asked. "Good news?"

"Good news," he confirmed. "I've gotta tell Poll and the rest of them first or they'll get pissed, but later. Later I'll tell you."

"Nine!" Arthur shouted, poking his head out of his office. "Places, boys." She was already moving down the steps, but Arthur made a point of adding, "You too, Trixie."

She saluted half-heartedly and took her seat at the table, wondering what good news John could possibly want to share. It wasn't business—John wouldn't know something that Poll and Tommy didn't, so what else could it be? Her thoughts had to be shoved aside by the time the doors opened and gamblers flooded into the shop, racing to place bets on the 2 o'clock.

For quite extraordinary times, the day pulled on rather slowly. Trixie's fingers were cold despite the energy in the room, but she left her hands bare for the sake of the counting, and the gem on her finger bounced light around the room carelessly with her movements. In fact, the day was so boring that Trixie was almost relieved when trouble found her, in the form of a man trying to place a bet when the race had already begun. The others had gone for lunch when the crowd dwindled, leaving Trixie to lock up the safes with Scudboat.

"Don't spend your rent money, Charlie," he instructed seriously.

Trixie snorted as she folded Charlie's rent money away into the case before her, and clicked it shut when Scudboat announced that betting was closed for the day.

"I was here on time," one of the regulars insisted, throwing a wad of cash down in front of Trixie.

"I'm sorry, sir," she said. "No more bets."

"I've had a tip-off," he pleaded. "I need this bet."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, sir. You know the rules. Once the race has started, I can't accept your money."

"Please."

"No."

"Fine," the man snapped, shoving the case off the desk and sending coins flying.

"Are you fucking serious?" Trixie asked, not moving from her chair. The remaining runners were already hurrying to pick up the coins, and one of them was stepping in front of the table to crowd the man and force him out.

"Alright," the man conceded, throwing his hands up. "Alright, I'm off."

He shrank back, and Trixie sighed. They didn't usually listen to her, but they didn't usually fight, either.

"Afternoon, Beatrice."

She turned over her shoulder and found Tommy Shelby standing behind her. So he hadn't been listening to her then after all, but to the self-proclaimed King of the city. "Thomas," she greeted, matching his clipped tone. "Can I help you?"

He hiked his eyebrow and subsequently dropped it. "No, you're quite alright. Poll called me here."

Was John announcing his news? Trixie leaned back in the chair, smiling sweetly. "Anything exciting?"

Tommy shrugged. "Family meeting."

"Is there ever a Shelby family meeting that isn't exciting?" Trixie inquired. "Do you ever gather just to share what you've had for breakfast?"

"Oh, every day," he retorted.

"Is Ada coming?"

"Presumably not," Tommy replied, plucking the cigarette from his mouth and ashing it in the dish on the table. "Are you worried about the Inspector, still?"

"Yes," she said plainly. "Yes, very much so."

"I told you I'd take care of it, didn't I? C'mon, Beatrice. Have a little faith." He pulled his cap from his head and tossed it down onto the table, taking a seat in the chair Scudboat had left behind.

"Faith in you?" she asked, bewildered. "Now, where would that get me besides an early grave?"

"I gave you my word."

"Yeah, well, you're not known for your good character around these parts, believe it or not."

Tommy offered her a cigarette, but Trixie shook her head. She'd been avoiding the damn things since Saturday's adventures with the pipe, but the craving was killing her. Maybe after Tommy left, when she was sure she could get through it without having some horrible flashback and getting sick.

"Tommy?" Polly called, sweeping into the room while pinning a gorgeous black hat to her hair. "Oh, good. Trixie, can you and Scudboat watch the shop? John's called for a meeting at the Garrison."

"Of course," said Trixie.

Tommy stood from the chair and shoved it back in noisily. "Be back in five," he called to Scudboat. "I'll talk to you later," he told Trixie.

"Ten's more likely," Polly corrected, pulling her coat onto her shoulders and leading Tommy outside. He didn't look back as he left, but Trixie didn't have a reason to expect him to. Instead of watching him go, she put the safe away and began locking up all the cabinets, while Scudboat handled the doors.

"You went to the races this weekend, eh?" he called. "You want tea?"

"Tea, yes," Trixie said. "And yeah, I did. I thought it would involve more horses, but it was mostly dancing and trying to figure out how one eats clams."

"How does one eat clams?" Scudboat asked, setting a pot of water down on the stovetop. "You don't eat the shells, do you?"

"No, I think that would make the whole task rather difficult." Probably the point of the shell, now that she thought about it, but clams probably hadn't taken humans and their stoves into consideration when they evolved into their present form. "You cook them and they open, and then you have to scrape the meat out with a fork."

"Were they good?"

"They were fine," Trixie said. "Probably not worth all the trouble of getting to them, though."

"Hear you there," Scudboat said, coming back into the main room. He sighed as he sunk down into his chair, and Trixie leaned against the table, arms folded across her chest. "Another day, another race."

She couldn't think of anything clever enough to be worth replying with, so Trixie just nodded. In the kitchen, the kettle began to whistle. "I'll get that," she said, happy for the chance to walk around. As she busied herself with the cups, a ruckus erupted behind her—first a crash, and then several voices shouting. Eight or so men had invaded the shop, and Scudboat was already on the ground by the time she processed all that was happening.

This was not normal. This was not allowed. As much as she harassed Tommy for his self-fashioned crown, she didn't doubt that it was true in the eyes of most of Small Heath. People knew better than to challenge the Peaky Blinders, unless they wanted a razorblade to the throat. Trixie froze by the stove, the whistle behind her dying down.

These men weren't well-dressed enough to be Kimber's, nor were they uniformed, which meant that they had to be the Lees.

The three seconds between her noticing them and them noticing her seemed to stretch on for an impossibly long time, but Trixie couldn't move her arms from where they were held out in front of her like a brace, and even if she could, what the hell was she going to do in a fight against eight armed men?

"Put that down!" one of the men shouted to her, jutting out the barrel of his rifle.

Trixie glanced at her hand, and found that she was holding a teacup. She obeyed, and the porcelain glass fell to the floor and cracked into three pieces.

"This is for Cheltenham," the man announced, approaching her with long strides and grabbing her roughly by the arm. "We're just taking back what's ours."

"I really don't—I really don't know what's going on," she lied. "Please."

"I saw you there," the man replied, leering over her before shoving her back down to the floor. "But you didn't see me, did you? You didn't see when your Peaky Blinder friend pulled my fucking ear off! Didn't see that, did you?" He pointed to the bandage wrapped across his head. Trixie had not, in fact, seen that, and she was quite grateful for that. But she felt like that was not the answer he wanted, and so she chose to stay quiet. "Pretty silver dress, hm? Meanwhile your fucking husband, and his fucking gang, were stealing from us. Acting like a bunch of fucking savages."

He held his knife close to her throat, and then dragged the blade up so it skimmed the side of her face. "You're pretty, aren't you? Think you'd be so pretty if I decided to take one of your eyes?"

Trixie's heart kicked in her chest and she pushed back, scrambling to get away from him. "Please," she said. "I—I didn't know, I was just going to the races with my husband, I didn't know."

The man leaned in closer, his knife skidding back down to her mouth and pressing down on her bottom lip. "Stop lying to me, or I'll cut your fucking tongue out, too."

When he pulled the blade back, the tip was stained red, but Trixie wasn't sure if it was her lipstick or her blood. The man pushed her sloppily down onto the floor and stepped over her, clicking his tongue.

"There's money everywhere," he barked, signaling to the others. "Take everything you can find."

Scudboat grunted beside her as he, too, was tossed to the ground. Trixie had been so focused on her own peril that she hadn't noticed how badly the Lees were beating him—his eyes were both swollen red and pulpy, his lip was split, and he was bowled over, clutching at their ribs. Peaky Blinders were tough, Peaky Blinders defied death, but that didn't mean they didn't suffer along the way. And even with decades of fighting under his belt, Scudboat had been outnumbered by six.

Trixie watched helplessly as the Lees began raiding the cabinets. Some of their reserves were still nailed under the floorboards, a safety measure she'd instilled after Campbell's raids, but if the Lees stole everything else it would hardly do any good. This could ruin them—if all the men who had placed bets today came away empty handed, they ran the risk of losing the city's trust for good.

They rifled through the shop violently, so different from the behavior she was used to with Tommy. It wasn't that he was particularly calm or friendly, but Tommy's danger was always a warning for something far crueller. That was what set him apart—his potential. Whatever he did was restrained, and pushing him ran the risk of unleashing whatever violence he was choosing to keep quiet. There was no rhyme or reason to the way that the Lees raided the shop, overturning tables and kicking paperwork aside. Their mission was singular: reclaim the money the other Peaky Blinders had stolen—and which they had technically stolen from Billy Kimber, but Trixie was hardly rushing to his defense at this moment.

If only she'd figured out how to shoot by now. It probably wouldn't have done much, but she wouldn't be so helpless if she had something besides heels and a fake wedding ring at hand. Trixie balled her hands into fists at her sides and watched as the Lees threw chests around and rifled through them. They moved quickly, though not as quickly as they could've been if they were more efficient. She wondered, vaguely, how they'd managed to get into the shop—after all, Scudboat had locked the doors. She'd watched him. And while they'd kicked down the door to the parlor itself, that didn't explain how they'd gotten into the building through the Watery Lane entrance.

As they poured cases of change into their bags, the Lees began to laugh with each other. "Seven bags," the one with the knife announced. "Consider the extra two an inconvenience fee."

Trixie said nothing, and he dropped both the bags in his arms to the floor. They landed heavily, coins jangling inside.

"You gonna say anything?" he asked. "Had such a mouth earlier." Brandishing his knife, he knelt down onto the floor and traced the point of his dagger along the swell of Trixie's cheek. "Tell Tommy he better fetch the wire cutters, eh?"

With all the suddenness of an alarm siren, he pushed the blade into her cheek and slashed against the bone. Immediately, her face felt hot from the spill of blood. Trixie lifted her hand to the stinging wound, reeling from the abrupt attack and watching as the Lees retreated the way they'd come, money in hand.

For a long moment, Trixie still couldn't move. If she pulled her hand from her face, she'd have to look at the blood, and then she'd have to do something about that, and that was too great a task at this exact second. So she just watched as the front door swung shut and then looked over at Scudboat. He wouldn't be much help as he was with his face swollen up like a balloon.

"I'll get help," Trixie said. "I'll—get—I'll get Tommy."

Still with her hand to her face, she pushed herself off the ground, avoiding the mirror in the entryway and stepping outside. Finn sat to the side of the door, his hands over his eyes, hidden. "Trixie!" he exclaimed. "You look like a monster."

"You know where Tommy is?" she asked, ignoring the comment about the cut. "He's at the Garrison, Finn. I want you to go get him, and tell him that we've been fucked over. But don't say fuck, alright? Just tell him we've been robbed."

He nodded, already standing up from the cobblestone and sprinting off towards the pub. Trixie slunk back inside, slid down to the floor, and did her best not to let the headache knock her out.

When Finn had burst into the Shelbys' private pocket of the Garrison, Tommy was relieved to have a way out of John's wedding plans. Lizzie Stark, marrying into the Shelby empire? She offered nothing to them, personally or politically, beyond the professional capacity in which the two were already acquainted—and that certainly was out of the question if she were to marry his younger brother.

But Finn's news was worse than John's. Tommy's first thought was about the money from the bets, which was logical enough, but trailing immediately behind it was just one word: Beatrice. Less logical, certainly, and not worth dwelling on. The Shelbys stormed out of the shop in a hurry, and by the time they'd crossed the streets to their home, the caravan he'd noticed earlier had departed. Lees.

"Scudboat?" he called, pushing the door open and inspecting the room, one hand still on his gun.

"He's here," said Beatrice. "He's in poor shape at this particular moment."

Arthur pushed past him then, barreling through the shop to inspect the damage, and John soon followed. But Tommy and Poll stood patiently in the living room, assessing things with as much detail as they could.

In the end, though, there were no details. "Fucking Christ!" John shouted, kicking over a stack of abandoned papers in the office. "They took fucking everything."

"Some of it's stashed below the floorboards," Beatrice offered. She was knelt at Scudboat's side, her own face leaking blood. "They didn't take that. They did, however, take seven full bags of money. So."

Tommy nodded slowly and took a moment to inspect her face. Compared to Scudboat, Beatrice had come out of their encounter with the Lees relatively unscathed, save for the cut on her cheek that would most certainly scar. Wordlessly, he removed his handkerchief from his pocket.

Beatrice reached out to take it from him, but he bypassed her, cradling the back of her head gently in one hand and using the other to dab at the blood.

"Oh," she said, the word falling out of her mouth before she could stop it. Tommy wished she wasn't so lovely. Perhaps that was the wrong thing to want—maybe he should've wished that he didn't find her lovely, but her face was a mix of incredulity, surprise, and spite, stained in blood, and he couldn't help remembering what she'd confessed to him in the car. We're so alike. "I'm alright."

"Arthur," Tommy ordered, holding his hand out. His older brother was quick to deposit a bottle of whiskey in it, and Tommy poured some of it onto the handkerchief. "It'll burn," he said.

"I'll live," Beatrice retorted.

With a shrug, he dabbed the alcohol-drenched chief against the wound. She hissed, but she didn't flinch, just glowered at him as if he'd been the one to cut her. Hell, maybe she did blame him. She wouldn't be entirely wrong. "Alright?" he asked.

"Could be better," she replied. "Is it bad? Finn said I look like a monster."

Maybe earlier, when the blood had been smeared across her cheek. Now, she just looked like one of them. If anything, the cut made it harder to pull his eyes from her, even more difficult than usual. How had a woman like her ended up with a scar like that? Me. That was how. "It'll heal," he said, running his thumb along the curve of it. It'll scar, he thought, but kept that to himself.

"He left me a message for you," Beatrice said, shifting awkwardly away from him.

"What's what?"

"He said you better fetch the wire cutters."

Tommy's hand stilled on her face. "Wire cutters?"

"Wire cutters?" Poll repeated. "Why would they want you to fetch wire cutters?"

Arthur already beat him to it. "Nobody move," he ordered, and Beatrice seemed to grow even more petrified. Her eyes were wild when they met his, but Tommy was already trying to work out where they may have hidden a bomb meant for him.

"I think our friends are playing the game," he remarked—surely enough, a quick inspection found a pair of wire cutters sitting atop the bureau. He abandoned Beatrice and carefully lifted them up. The damn things were shiny and good as new—those fucking Lees.

"What game?" Polly demanded, marching across the room.

"Aunt Poll, don't touch anything!" John shouted, sticking out a hand to physically stop his aunt.

"What the hell," said Trixie, "is fucking happening."

"Erasmus Lee was in France," Tommy explained.

Scudboat put it together instantly. "Shit."

Beatrice had not been in France, and so she just craned her neck towards him and silently demanded an answer.

"When we gave up ground to the Germans, we'd leave behind booby traps. Set up wires," Tommy continued. "And we'd leave wire cutters as part of the joke."

"Somewhere in here, there's a hand grenade," said John.

"Holy Jesus," said Polly, at the exact same moment that Tommy heard Beatrice mutter, "Oh Jesus bloody Christ."

"Attached to a wire," Arthur continued. "Don't move any chairs or open any doors."

"I didn't see them set it," Beatrice interrupted. "I didn't see everything—I won't pretend I did, but I was watching them and they were far too focused on getting the money and leaving than they were setting traps."

"You think they might be fucking with us?" John asked.

Tommy did not underestimate their hatred towards him, and so he shook his head. "They didn't send a bullet with my name on it for nothing." But it had been a bullet with his name—not Shelby. Thomas Shelby. They weren't trying to kill John, or Arthur, or Polly, or Beatrice. They were trying to kill him.

Where would he go where others wouldn't follow?

"The car," he said. "If it was in here, it would've gone off by now. But the car—nobody else drives the car."

Arthur was the first to run, but Tommy shoved past him once they were on the street. He had a steadier hand, and he was holding the cutters. This was routine, disarming a bomb, and not the kind of skill a man forgot after learning, even if he tried.

Except Finn was in the fucking front seat.

Which meant that this was completely new territory.

By some miracle, he'd climbed through the window without setting the fucking thing off, but he was, like any eleven-year-old boy, restless and impossible to contain. "Finn?" he called, keeping his voice level. Tommy Shelby rarely panicked, but the prospect of his baby brother being blown to bits in front of him would do it. "Finn, stay exactly where you are."

Finn put both hands on the steering wheel and pretended to turn it. Tommy gritted his teeth. "I was pretending I was you," said his brother with a giggle.

An awful thing to hear, but no time to dwell. "Which door did you open to come in, Finn?"

"I didn't," his brother replied. "I climbed in."

Taking slow steps towards the car, Tommy instructed, "I want you to climb out exactly the way you climbed in, okay?"

Finn was still smiling, and Tommy wanted to shout at him that if he didn't follow his directions very clearly he might be killed, but reasoning with a crying child would undoubtedly prove more difficult, and the risk of Finn thrashing in his panic was far too great to be worth it. So Tommy would remain calm, and he would get Finn out of here safely.

Except, Finn had other plans. With a giggle, he lunged for the passenger side of the car, and that's when Tommy saw the grenade. He launched himself into the carriage, seized it, and wound up a throw. "Clear!" he shouted, hurling the grenade as far across the street as he could. It went off as it landed, exploding in one of the fires and eliciting screams from the pedestrians. When he turned to his brother, Finn was already being tended to by Beatrice, who cradled him to her chest like a baby. He sobbed into her shoulder and she hushed him kindly, before Tommy reached over for him, yanking him back down to the ground.

In his shock, Finn stopped crying. Tommy grabbed his chin roughly and knelt down to his level. "That's why you should never pretend to be me," he commanded. "Got it?"

Finn nodded, his face red and splotchy from the tears.

Somehow, Tommy didn't quite believe him.

Much to Polly's chagrin, Trixie had immediately promised candy to Finn.

"Are we rewarding him for nearly getting himself blown to pieces?" she squawked, pulling the cigarette from her mouth in disbelief.

They were several paces behind the boy now, walking along the river as he alternated between placing pieces of chocolate in his mouth and throwing their shiny foil wrappers to the birds. "He didn't know," Trixie said. Finn had just been behaving as a child—it was their fault for putting a child into such an environment, and maybe her fault for not watching him more closely while the rest of the Shelbys had left the betting shop. "He's only eleven, let him be a child for a bit longer."

"There's no room in this city for children. He'll have to grow up eventually," said Polly.

Trixie sighed. She was right, of course—she was always right, but Finn was the last innocent Shelby, as far as she was concerned, and she would hate to see that destroyed. "Eventually," she conceded. "Not yet." Finn laughed as a swarm of pigeons descended near him to pick up the small foils he was littering the street with. His tears had stopped a while ago, when they'd arrived at the candy store, but his eyes were still a bit puffy, and his face a bit red. It felt almost indecent then for Trixie to turn to Polly and ask, "I need to learn to shoot a gun."

Polly sighed and gave her a knowing look. "I knew you'd come around."

"It's just a lot all at once," Trixie said, the itch to defend herself irresistible. "Campbell had his men kidnap me and bring me to a Church, and then Kimber was trying to seduce me because he'd never been with my kind of woman before, and then the Lees." She reached up to her face and drew her thumb along the line of the scar. Tommy had bandaged it when they returned to the shop, though he'd done a bit of a sloppy job with the tape. It no longer hurt unless she pressed it, but Trixie dreaded having to look at it in the mirror when she removed the patch-up for her bath.

"Kimber tried to seduce you?" Polly asked.

"Yeah."

"And you said no?"

Trixie made a face. "Well obviously. I wasn't going to lose my virginity to that toad of a man on a Billiards table with his wife and Tommy in the next room."

Polly laughed, and then said, "I guess that explains what he told Tommy after."

What he told Tommy? "What did he say?"

Polly took a drag of her cigarette, slow and deliberate in a way that telegraphed that her news would not be good. "He said he doesn't trust you and doesn't want you managing his account."

Trixie blinked. "You're joking."

"Business is too lucrative to joke about."

"Shit," she said, looking out at the canal. She wanted very suddenly to hit something, or maybe scream. Of course Kimber had fucked her over. "Why didn't Tommy tell me?"

"It's fine," Polly said. "We're going to have you keep with the rest of what you're doing, and spend afternoons at the Garrison."

"Kimber's our biggest account."

"Since when have you been in favor of the expansion?" Polly asked.

"Since when have you?" Trixie returned.

The two women spent a long minute staring each other down. Polly had been against the expansion since the start, Trixie had always been a bystander. Soon she'd be even less. If anyone had taken more of a pivot, it had been Polly, though everyone capitulated to Tommy sooner or later. Their moment broke only when Finn shouted, "Ah!"

Trixie started, immediately worrying that he'd fallen into the cut, but when she turned she found that he was just wrenching the paper bag of sweets away from a rather aggressive pigeon.

"Stop feeding them, Finn," Polly ordered. "We didn't buy candy for the birds, we bought candy for you." She glanced at Trixie. "Well, Trixie did, at least."

"We're getting off-topic," Trixie said. "Tommy got me a gun, but I don't know how to shoot, and I have no bullets."

"Well we've plenty of bullets," Polly dismissed. "Sometimes I find them in the pots and pans. You'll need to make a trip to the countryside if you want to learn to shoot."

"Never a problem with me," she said.

Polly sighed. "I can have John take you then, alright? Tommy hates lending him the car, but he'll have to deal with it. I'll keep him busy with the work you should be doing."

At his name, Trixie remembered the news John had mentioned earlier. Finding out what it was had been swiftly out-prioritized by everything else that had happened in the day, but if she didn't ask it would gnaw at her. "Did John tell you what the news was? He was supposed to tell me after you got back but I forgot to ask."

Polly snorted. "Says he's getting married."

Trixie's eyes widened into saucers. "John?"

"For his kids, he says," said Polly. "Though, if I was thinking of the children, I wouldn't have chosen Lizzie Stark." Trixie had not heard the name before, and Polly seemed to notice her confusion, so she elaborated, "Lizzie Stark is a whore. I doubt she knows a thing about children."

"Oh," Trixie said. She'd never met a prostitute, never talked to one, but she knew plenty of men who solicited their services. Mostly, the news made her remember Martha. She'd kept to herself when they knew each other, busy raising John's children—three before the war, and one after—but she'd succumbed to the Consumption, same as Trixie's father. The children she left behind busied themselves playing with Finn and wreaking havoc on the shops of Small Heath through petty theft and vandalism. If she'd lived, Trixie may have befriended her. She was certainly spirited before she'd grown ill and tired from the labor of motherhood, attracting John's attention by beating him in a fight when they were teenagers, but that vivacity had been dampened in the wake of war. If John was marrying for the sake of the children, it was probably for the best, given his lack of interest in raising his children.

But she didn't know Lizzie Stark. While Trixie didn't put much weight in Polly's assessment—the Shelbys were always wary of outsiders, and in the wake of a woman like Martha, it was difficult to compete—she had learned to regard strangers with caution before she got to know them. She'd ask John next time they saw each other, then, what kind of a person Lizzie Stark was.

"Looks like all the Shelbys are settling down," Trixie said. "Who's next? Arthur?"

"I'm doubtful Arthur will ever find a woman able to tolerate him."

"I'd say the same about Tommy, but I've become that woman, apparently."

Polly gave her a sly grin. "It'll be over soon, god willing."

Trixie smiled, but felt the pit of dread in her stomach nonetheless. It would be over, but so would everything else: days by the docks, talks like this with Polly, work with John. She'd have to start over completely, emerge from Birmingham like she'd come from a second baptism, though this one by fire.

A/N: Here we go with episode 4! This chapter was a lot of fun to write, I'm poking myself for the title shoutout at the end lol. Tommy? Caring? Maybe! Trixie? Caring? Perhaps…

Thank you so much to 101297, NotSureHowToMingle, Idcam, EleanorJames, and scars from the sun for reviewing last chapter, and thank you to everyone who has reviewed for 100! We're officially halfway through this story, and things are only going to get more intense as we go on. Let me know what you thought of this chapter too if you feel so inclined!

Chapter 17 / Baby Shot Me Down

"What the bloody fuck do you think you're doing?" Trixie demanded, watching in horror as Curly dragged her bookshelf through the front door. Tommy offered her a cigarette, raising his eyebrows nonchalantly. Trixie smacked his hand away. "Tell me what's happening."

He sighed, and took the cigarette for himself. "Better dig out that pretty silver dress. We're getting married this weekend, Beatrice."