Chapter 78

Lily had seemed more herself the next day, the upset and uneasiness of the dress debacle had disappeared into the night and she chatted away to him as she slurped soup for her lunch – her sat on his lap as the other chairs had been taken by George, Finn, Katie and Isaiah because apparently Rosie had taken the school holidays as a signal that she was supposed to open their kitchen to every waif and stray who wanted a home cooked meal.

He supposed, somewhat begrudgingly, he couldn't really blame them - the woman was excellent in the kitchen. But it meant he had to linger to snatch five minutes alone with her, and he had come to expect that time with her in the middle of his day now.

When what seemed like half the street's kids, as well as half the betting shop's workforce, had been fed, Rosie had set about making a couple of pies and cakes for Charlie and Curly, telling him it was a thank you to them for stabling the horse.

"You don't need to be making them things for that," he told her, raising an eyebrow and sucking deeply on a cigarette.

What was her plan? Take them cakes and pies every week for the next twenty or so years he expected the horse to live? Provided no Lee fuckers got themselves near it.

"Charlie's been good to us Tommy, he's let us use his yard for me to practise with the gun - and he's kept his mouth shut. And he's awful good with Lily."

"He's my uncle."

"So?"

He rolled his eyes at her question. So what? Charlie was his uncle, his kin – what was one was the other's. That was how it worked, as far as he was concerned. But Rosie didn't come from that background of communal family living, like they all did. And if it made her happy, as he suspected it did, to be able to take Charlie and Curly pies and cakes, then so bloody be it. And he imagined his uncle and Curly would appreciate them. The two men kept themselves alive right enough but it was hardly as if either of them were exactly culinary geniuses – though Charlie had been the one who had taught him how to catch, kill, skin and cook a rabbit.

He kissed her forehead, "Alright, you make them what you like my love. You taking them this afternoon?"

She nodded, "I was planning to."

"You can see the horse then. I'd come with you, but I took yesterday off – need to do some work today."

"It might be an idea to send Finn or someone along to the Garrison with some soup for Arthur," Rosie said suddenly, eyeing the pot of leftover soup on the stove.

She didn't comment on the fact he'd spent the best part of two hours wandering in and out of the kitchen waiting for it to empty, and he was glad of it. He liked to fancy that she enjoyed his presence in the middle of the day too.

How there was any of her soup left over with the number of mouths she had fed, he didn't know. It was just as well she was good with her ideas, her feeding of the five thousands would be on the road to bankrupting them. He tucked it away to review the food budget he gave her.

Outwardly, he snorted dismissively, "Arthur'll manage."

Arthur had been spending more and more time at The Garrison lately – and whilst Tommy wasn't convinced his brother was getting to know much about the running of the pub, like Harry was supposed to be teaching him, it kept him occupied and out of Tommy's own way. But still, he wasn't keen on leaving the house with only John or some workers in it in terms of defending it should the Lee's descend, and the freedom of being able to work and think without Arthur breathing down his neck and making a racket to distract from his brother's own lack of work was balanced by being more tethered to the house than Tommy usually had to be.

He was glad he had stayed tethered to it though when Lily appeared in his office doorway not long after Rosie had set off – she was going to town for their dinner and going to Charlie's on her way back – the child's face red and streaked with tears that were spilling over like a dam had burst somewhere inside of her.

He picked her up and tried to soothe her, bouncing her a little, asking what it was that got her so upset. But she was so upset that she couldn't seem to voice the words to answer him.

"Alright, alright," he murmured, stroking her hair, "You cry it out."

Children moved so quickly. The day before she'd been a mess when she came home, then he'd got her calm and she'd stayed in that night, sitting on his lap and listening to him read the paper aloud to her when she'd requested he tell her a story, that morning – and even at lunch – she'd seemed perked up, energized and back to normal. And now, a few hours later, her world was falling apart again for whatever reason. But still, for as long as she came running to him to piece it back together for her, he'd gladly pick up his tools, every hour on the hour if need be.

Polly pushed open his door, having clearly seen the child come through the shop, and raised an eyebrow at him but when his aunt opened her mouth, he cut across her before her words could form.

"Out!" he ordered, emphasizing the order with a jerk of his head.

Polly glared at him, then shut the door loudly.

He knew Polly meant well by trying to keep Lily out of the shop. He knew they had unsavoury clientele and that by allowing the child to be in the shop when he deemed it safe and not at other times, he wasn't making the rules about when she was or wasn't allowed into the shop very clear in her own mind. But now, with the bab crying into his chest, wasn't the time to his mind for a lecture on what Polly had told her about being, or not being, in the shop.

He locked the door, keeping the outside world at bay and murmured, "You're alright my little love, just you and me, eh?"

He continued to meander around his office, hugging her and bouncing her as best he could until she finally seemed to quieten a little and he made another attempt at getting an explanation from her - but still, she couldn't – or wouldn't, he wasn't entirely sure which – explain herself to him, simply keeping her face pressed into him and shaking her head against his shirtfront.

He managed to contain his sigh, "Alright then, you take your time, I'm here and I'm not going anywhere, eh?"

He sat back at his desk, pulling Danny's letter towards him and reading it over Lily's head, holding her in his lap as she continued to cry – though he fancied the sobs were slightly softer. By the time he was writing his reply, confirming he could arrange the car parts Danny's buyer needed to be shipped by the deadline if his price was met, she had calmed down enough to talk.

"Everyone's angry with me and they all hate me," she told him, her eyes full of misery as she looked up to him for comfort.

"No one hates you my little love," he assured her.

"They do. Finn does."

Ah, so it was something to do with his little brother then. He had watched Lily and Finn find their relationship with one another – with a little shaping on his, and, he suspected, Rosie's parts, they had settled into a normal brother sister relationship, where Finn got to revel in being older for once and got to throw his weight around a little bit, but where he also, generally, seemed to look out for the bab too. And for Lily's part, Finn's approval meant something to her. He gripped his pen more tightly as he thought of how his own approval once had meant something to his own little sister.

"Finn does not. He might be upset with you but he doesn't hate you."

She didn't answer and he realised downplaying it wasn't going to diffuse it, so he put his pen down and sat back in his chair, focussing his full attention on the child and asked, "Why is Finn angry with you?"

"Cause…" she trailed off, screwed up her face a little as she thought and then continued, "Cause he told me something and I told Katie and I wasn't meant to but I didn't know. And then she went and shouted at him and George and it's all a mess."

"All a mess, eh?" he asked, biting the inside of his mouth to keep from laughing as she nodded forlornly.

He had learned the hard way how little filter the child had, and now Finn had too. He half hoped she never gained a filter – that she kept that innocent babbling on habit for all her days. Though he'd have wished otherwise during the time when Rosie hadn't been speaking to him because of the child's filter-less relaying of information. His heart panged when he realised she was avoiding telling him what it was she had told Katie. His hope seemed somewhat futile. She'd learn the same as everyone learned to curb their tongues.

"It'll be forgotten by the time Finn comes in for his dinner, you'll see," he told her, trying to offer what he hoped was an adult reassurance, but she shook her head, entirely unconvinced.

"You reckon it's that serious?"

Again, a non verbal nod in response.

"Well, we'll see - but even if Finn isn't talking to you, you're still my best girl, aren't you?"

He got another silent nod, but this one was accompanied by a slight upturn to her little mouth and a small wave of relaxation seemed to ripple across her skin – her brow not quite uncreasing entirely, but smoothing a little.

He smiled at it, hugging her tightly to him on his lap, "You just stay here with me, eh? If Finn gives you any trouble I'll mind him of things he's repeated that he shouldn't have."

Ada had certainly learned to curb her tongue back.

His mind was still on his sister, and the various ways he had failed her, as he watched Lily wander around the shop later on, sliding the chairs neatly under the desks as he had asked her to do whilst he did the count. Spending a few hours in his office with him until everyone had gone home had calmed her down – and as she wandered around he could almost replace her with the figure of another young child who had grown at his knee in this same shop, until he'd gone off to war.

It had been nothing but war since then. Even when he'd come home, he'd had a new war to wage – one on the life he'd known. He had decided then he wasn't going to be shoved around by the cavalry on their horses any more. Not in anything. He was going to make something of them all – going to keep fighting, to keep punching up and out because… Partly because he never wanted Ada or Finn to go through what he had. Didn't want them to know that life ever again. And partly because he didn't know how to stop. Because he didn't know how to do anything else. And because, when he did stop – when he stopped only because he was forced to, from sheer exhaustion, he found himself in the tunnels all over again.

He had only known some sort of peace when he'd started his routine visits to the tobacco shop. When he'd focussed his energy into uncovering the story of the silent girl in her men's clothes and hacked off hair. It had distracted him from everything else. And then he'd known real peace when she came to him. It had been a slow unfurling of her petals – though, despite her name, getting to know her was far less flower like and more like chiselling down a wall, small puffs of dust expelling themselves every so often, the journey through moving so slowly it felt many times like giving up was the best course of action - and then a small flash of the nirvana he had been sure lay behind the wall would show itself to him and he'd come back with renewed vigour. And he had the feeling he wasn't even properly through her walls yet. But he had begun to sleep well. He'd begun to feel satisfied, to relax even…

And he'd gotten used to that. Like a cat purring in the sun, determined to lap it up, he hadn't questioned Ada enough about the friend's houses she was always running off to. Hadn't intervened enough when she started slapping make up on her face and dressing more and more like the women in her magazines. He should have been tougher on her. Been more observant. It was his fault. He had let her run off into Freddie's arms.

"Tommy?" Lily asked, pulling him from his thoughts.

"Uhuh?"

"What does the shop sell?"

What did they sell? He turned the question over in his mind, slightly surprised by it. He had never lied about what they did, but he supposed neither he nor anyone else had ever told her what a betting shop actually was. He remembered coming into his office after he'd been to see Ada at Polly's – when he'd had every intention of striking her for his own failings and Polly had seen him off with a gun pointed at him – and finding Lily at his desk playing at being a shop keeper. He took a deep inhale on his cigarette and tried to find it funny, the idea of her thinking of him as being like Harrison or the now shopless and tongueless Evans who Rosie had used to work for.

What if the war had never happened? The shop had been many things at many times. At one point it had been coal. He could have made it something else. But they'd had nothing, when their father had left for the final time. He'd been seventeen. No mother. No father. Good with his fists. Smart enough, but no interest in giving his brains to anyone else. No capital to invest in stock. Taking bets – it only cost what you had to pay out and you could set those odds. But it could have been something else. If he'd been someone else. If their lives had been something else.

And if they had been something else – if the war had never happened… What would Freddie be now? And what would he be? Would they stand side by side still, like they always had done? Would finding out that their Ada wanted to be with Freddie have resulted in him warning Freddie to take good fucking care of her but ultimately shaking his hand and letting them be?

He looked over to Lily. It didn't matter what could have been. It mattered what was. No point in getting lost in potential. What mattered was the here and now.

She almost flinched when he looked at her and he realised his face must be betraying his thoughts. He was guilty of that around Rosie and Lily. More off guard.

He smiled reassuringly at her, "Hope Lily. We sell people hope. And excitement. And an escape."

Betting shops and communism. Hope. Excitement. Escape. Something to believe in. Except the worst that came from believing in a horse and betting on it being wrong was losing some coin – not being locked up or finding yourself facing the noose.

"That's not something you can buy anywhere else," Lily replied.

He smiled properly at that.

He had failed Ada. But he was going to fix it. God knew how. But for Rosie's sake, he was going to.

But if what mattered was the here and now, Lily was his second chance and he wasn't going to fail her. She would never know about communism, past that she'd had that smacking in school over it from that bloody teacher. He was still irked at Rosie making him leave that alone.

"No," he told her, "No my girl, it's not. We Shelbys have the monopoly on it."

He went over to her and hoisted her up off the ground, tucking his hands under her arms and swinging her around in circles. She let out excited shrieks and giggles and he found himself laughing too at the sound of them. Filterless and innocent. That was what she was. And he'd protect her, so she could stay that way.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

He was still doing the count and Lily was sitting at one of the desks drawing when they were both interrupted by the door that separated the shop from the house opening with such force that it ricocheted off the wall and started to shut itself back over, stopped only by Rosie's hand, still outstretched.

She was fuming – that was obvious. Her anger radiated off of her in waves, seemed etched in every suddenly staccato element of her, none of her seeming the usual smooth, undulating body with the liquid eyes he was used to. This was like the girl he'd seen see off men in her own shop who didn't have the money to pay for their cigarettes, but manifested, magnified ten, fifteen times over. And her eyes were trained on the child.

"What are you-" What are you so angry about? He had wanted to ask her – but he didn't get to finish the question

"I've just come from Charlie's yard," Rosie announced to the room, silencing him easily even though she kept her voice controlled, even slightly more quiet than normal, "He had quite an interesting story about something he saw yesterday. Any ideas what that was Lily?"

His eyes moved to look at the child, who was chewing on her fingers.

"Get those fingers out of your mouth and answer me," Rosie snapped.

His eyes stayed on Lily who seemed, the opposite way to how Rosie had stiffened, to have turned to liquid – or perhaps jelly – she had come off the seat and was standing, trembling a little, her fingers slowly popping out of her mouth, a small trail of saliva coming with them. She shook her head, but he guessed that was self-preservation rather than her usual filterless truth telling. It seemed to him that the wide-eyed child had a fairly good idea of whatever interesting story Charlie had relayed to Rosie.

"No?" Rosie asked, her voice doing some pantomime impression of surprise before she went on, annunciating each word and speaking in a measured, controlled way, "Uncle Charlie was taking a boat down The Cut yesterday, back to his yard, and all the way down at Bordesley - just short of the Bordesley Junction, practically near enough in Digbeth. He swears he saw you, covered head to toe in muck, and Katie and your pram on the side of The Cut. And I thought well that's a very strange story because Lily and Katie don't leave the lane without permission, nevermind go near The Cut or leave Small Heath. So, I'm presuming there's a very reasonable explanation?"

His own mind roared. The Bordesley Junction was practically in Digbeth, like she'd said. How in holy hell had the child and his niece ended up there? And Lily – Lily couldn't even swim. Visions flashed in his mind, of her falling in, being sucked under, flailing about. He remembered Polly's husband's body on the vardo before they'd set the flames. Swollen. Ugly. The idea of her tiny body swollen like that – no. No.

And she had been there. It had been her – that had been obvious anyway from her face as soon as Rosie had walked in, but she confirmed it when she suddenly bolted, hurtling up the stairs.

He paused only to meet Rosie's eyes, wait for her to give a small, curt nod that she agreed with what she knew his chosen method of discipline would be and then he was on the child's heels.

No. Her body would not end up swollen and ugly on the flames. He wasn't going to fail her by allowing for that.

He reached the door, which she'd shut as if that would keep him out, and pushed on it, met with slightly more resistance than he'd expected. She'd stood against it, probably intending to hold it closed against him. But her small squeak and the sound of her throwing herself on the floor confirmed that even she knew that was futile.

He pushed open the door in time to see her crawling under the bed and managed to cross the room in a stride, grabbing one of her ankles and pulling her in the opposite direction from where she wanted to go. Once her head was clear, he slid a hand around her, under her stomach, and hoisted her up under his arm, sitting himself on the bed and placing her over his knee.

The first time he'd properly turned Ada over his knee it had been in her bedroom – just through the wall. He'd felt like an idiot. But he wasn't that kid anymore, dishing out his first attempt at parental discipline.

"What were you thinking?" he growled, smacking down hard on the upturned rear.

"I'm sorry! Tommy I'm sorry - I didn't mean to!" she answered him, wriggling already.

He took her waist to keep her where he'd put her and asked, "You didn't mean to - but you did, didn't you?"

She nodded miserably, her face pressed into the yellow bedcover that she had picked out that Saturday after he'd brought them both here. That they'd gone and picked out whilst Rosie had been at work.

"Yes. She did," Rosie's voice snapped from where she'd come to stand in the doorway, her arms crossed.

"You are not supposed to leave – the – lane," Tommy reminded the child, punctuating his last three words with three more hard smacks.

He had to make sure he made an impression, had to make sure she never went near the cut again. Had to make sure the visions of her body, bloated and decomposing, never came to reality.

"Not only did you leave the lane, you went to The Cut," he snarled, another two heavy smacks landing.

He suspected she'd leave the lane again – they all would. Her, Katie, Finn… He had to make sure she knew the main problem was her choice of where she'd gone. He'd turn her up and redden her for going anywhere without his permission, sure, to make the point that she was supposed to ask – but he was resolved, as unpleasant as it would be, that this would be one particular trip over his knee that she'd remember.

"Do you realise how dangerous that is?" he demanded, "Even Finn isn't allowed down at The Cut! Well, I'm going to give you a damn good reason to stay where you're supposed to be, Lily."

He wasn't sure if he was telling her or telling himself though. His heart was thudding, she was wriggling and she'd already apologised – even if he knew fine well that she was sorry she'd been caught. God. Yesterday, the state she'd been in – both emotionally and physically. He should have questioned her more on the muck she'd been covered in. He should have prodded her for the whole story. But he hadn't and she'd gone to bed and had awoken seeming better. Because she thought she'd gotten away with it.

Unfiltered indeed.

As the anger at her deceit, as well as the fear of what might have happened to her, coursed through him, he whipped up her dress and tugged down her underwear, determined to do what needed doing. He needed to make sure this one made an impression.

He brought his hand down, fast and stinging, lighter than the smacks he had already delivered, but not as light as the smacks she'd had from him before.

The first time he'd spanked her – properly put her over his knee and spanked her – after she'd wandered away... He'd needed to do it, because he needed her to learn not to wander. Not to put herself in danger. But though the lesson needed taught, he'd been sure that the ritual of her first trip over knee would do the teaching more than his actual hand had to. And though he'd known it needed taught, it had needed taught on the principal of what could have happened had she wandered elsewhere. Where she had actually wandered had been in a department shop, where she really couldn't have ended up too lost. He hadn't had any motivation really to make it any more than the teaching of a lesson she needed to learn.

The second time – that had been about the bloody window and, quite frankly, he wouldn't have gone through with it if Rosie hadn't pushed him to. His heart hadn't been in it at all. It had been dished out because none of the others would have gotten away without it, and because both he and Rosie knew that letting Lily off with things the rest of them wouldn't have gotten off with drove wedges between the kids. They'd learned that in the six weeks after Christmas when Lily and Katie had purposefully avoided one another. But he'd given her some firm taps and called it done.

In fact, he thought the hardest smacks he'd ever dished out to her before now might have been the first ones he ever had given her – in the yard when she'd run forward to see the horse and his heart had stopped for a minute.

Sure, he'd smacked her other times for her cheek or general disobedience, but they had been pointed taps more than they'd even been proper smacks. Generally a raised eyebrow or a bit of a growl was enough to have her chewing her fingers and backtracking on her behaviour.

This time – this was different. And she had to know it was different.

"What on earth made you think you could just decide to disobey me?" he demanded of her.

"I didn't – Didn't mean – I'm sorry!" she howled in response, kicking and shaking her head.

"You're going to be," he replied, nodding to himself.

She wasn't sorry yet – or not sorry enough. She was sorry she'd gotten caught.

He made sure to smack down the backs of her legs too, an area he'd never gone near on her, knowing from experience that she'd feel it there when she sat for a while.

"I have told you - I have explained it to you - I have discussed it with you," he said, landing his hand with every syllable, glancing up to Rosie with a raised eyebrow – the redhead gave a defeated looking nod for him to continue, her raw ire seemed to have gone - "That you are not allowed to leave the lane without permission. You know you are supposed to make sure Rosie or I know where you are at all times. And you didn't bother asking permission yesterday before you went off, because you know damn well that you wouldn't have been allowed to go!"

By the time he had delivered his lecture she was about done. He could tell. Her sobbing was becoming more continuous, her kicking and wriggling were slowing to a stop. Her skin was red. A bright, angry looking red. He'd never considered before that Lily was as pale as Rosie – the skin came from their mother, he presumed. Rosie seemed paler, with her hair and eyes contrasting and enhancing the whiteness, whereas Lily with her light hair and eyes seemed to blend more and the skin looked less stark… Or it had done, until he was comparing areas of it that he had smacked against the unsmacked bits.

"You could have drowned Lily! You could have been taken away! What am I supposed to do to make you listen and do – as – you're – told?" he scolded, stilling his hand so she'd hear the first part of his speech, emphasising the last four words with another four smacks, before holding still again as he continued, "You are going to remember this, Lily - and you are not going to go anywhere without permission ever again, do you hear me?"

She nodded.

"Right!" he proclaimed, smacking her hard one last time, "You are going to stay here until I come get you for dinner."

He stood up, hoisting her under his arm again and then half placed, half dropped her back down, facing the opposite direction, her head nearer the pillows, "If I hear a toe on the floor I'll come back in here and we'll have a repeat, you understand?"

She nodded again without lifting her head, still crying. He clenched and unclenched his hand as he raked his eyes over the results of his discipline. He just had to hope it was enough.

Half of him wanted to pick her up and hold her to him. Even wanted to apologise to her for being too hard on her, to some extent. He felt like an arsehole.

And half of him was too angry to even think about how to offer her any comfort in this moment. That half of him was taking over – that was the half of him that had put off needing to talk to her again until dinner time.

Maybe by then he might have figured out what to say. How to compromise between the part of him that wanted to make it okay between them now, the part of him that wanted the child to be his best girl and smile at him with that glowing smile of his that always had him right around her finger and the part of him that knew it was his job in this moment to be the parent and to ensure she never went wandering down to The Cut again.

Frustrated, he left the room, Rosie moving herself out of the doorway and into the corridor to make way for him. He slammed the door over behind him – harder than he meant to, just to add to his guilt, and thundered down the stairs.

"Tommy – where are you?" Rosie started to ask, following him, more light of foot – as if that would have been hard - as he made his way through the kitchen and the front room, making for the door.

"Katie," he replied shortly.

She didn't respond.

Inwardly, he was half hoping Polly or John would be in his brother's house – wanted to pass this feeling of being a rat bastard right on over to someone else – but outwardly he must have been doing a good job at concealing his conflict, because when he set his sights on Katie and made his way down the lane towards where she was stood, the kids she was stood with saw him coming and scattered, leaving her alone and staring at him, seemingly frozen.

It was almost comical – Lily froze at the result of a stern look, but she had bolted when she'd known real trouble was heading her way. Katie was the opposite. He'd expect her to bolt, and she had done, plenty of times in the past – he knew she'd run away from John enough times that she'd tired his brother out to the point he'd given up the bother of tracking her down and dealing with her – but she was watching his approach with her mouth open, the idea of running not even seeming to occur to her.

He grabbed her upper arm and made his way to John's front door, met with no resistance from either his niece or the door – which was, as always to his chagrin, unlocked. Hadn't he explained the dangers of the Lees?

Another of his hopes went unanswered, the house appeared to be empty and he squeezed his eyes tight shut for a second, clenching his jaw, before pushing through the front room to the kitchen.

He heard the door open and close softly behind him – but it was only that Rosie had followed him for some reason.

"Got anything you want to own up to?" he asked Katie once he'd sat himself down on one of the kitchen chairs and pulled her between his legs.

She looked between him and Rosie – who once again was lingering in the doorway.

"If you want a clue," Rosie said, her voice no longer trembling with fury the way it had been, but still displeased enough that Katie's eyes widened upon hearing it directed at her, "I've just come from your Uncle Charlie's. He had a boat out on The Cut yesterday."

Katie bit her lip.

"Don't suppose you noticed him driving by you, no?" Tommy asked.

Katie's head, which had been over her shoulder, looking at Rosie, whipped around to him.

She didn't answer.

"Get over," Tommy told her, jerking his head to the side.

She still didn't seem able to move and he sighed, gripped her left arm with his right and used it to pull her round and forward, tipping her over his knee.

He delivered the second spanking much the same as he had done the first – the same lecture about safety, about how she could have died, that they both could have died, about staying in the lane, about how even Finn wasn't allowed near The Cut.

Rosie had moved, was busying herself with looking at the pictures on John's mantelpiece behind where he sat with Katie – but when he made his only deviance from the first lecture to say, "And I'll bet it was your idea, wasn't it Katie? To go down there and drag Lily along with you, eh?" – she came over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it.

He glanced up, slightly confused, and she shook her head, warning him not to go down that route.

He sighed and left off his line of questioning, simply continuing with delivering the spanking. It was pointless - Katie was only wailing in response now anyway. And she was right. It was pointless also because – although he was positive he was right, of course, Lily had gone – they both had gone - and it didn't actually matter which one of them had had the initial idea. They could have both ended up dead.

As if John hadn't been through enough.

God, when in hell were these kids going to fucking listen to him?

By the time he had turned Katie's tanned skin as red as Lily's, she was the same blubbering mess as he'd had on his hands ten minutes before.

He stood her up and her hands went to her backside, rubbing frantically, her feet moving too as she did little jumps on the spot, like she was trying to stamp out a fire. He could only bloody well hope he had put enough of a fire in her that it would burn away any ideas of returning to The bloody Cut. She was looking at him, her eyes teary and blurry and he wasn't sure what she was after, so he raised an eyebrow in question. She squeaked, yanked her underwear back into place and then went from the room, her hands back to the rubbing as soon as they could be, her feet light on the stairs. He got the impression she'd have run if she could, but that her backside was slowing her down.

There was a silence in the room then, which finally broke when Rosie walked by him, also in the direction of the stairs.

"Where you going?"

"I told her she could share me," Rosie said with a shrug.

He raised an eyebrow and watched her disappear off up the stairs, whilst he stayed in the kitchen.

He didn't know what to do. He knew he should follow her. Should go offer some words of forgiveness or comfort or – or just something. But he didn't know what to say.

He felt… betrayed by Lily. For the first time. Every other time, there had been some bad judgement on the child's part that he wanted to correct. But this – this had happened yesterday and she had thought she'd gotten away with it and had acted normally… He felt like she had gutted him. With a serrated edged blade that she'd twisted in him before she took it back out.

And despite that, he still felt like he wanted to run back to number six and beg her forgiveness.

Katie… Katie, on the other hand, he wasn't surprised at. There was no rug pulled beneath his feet with Katie. Just fear at what might have happened. Determination to make sure it didn't happen again.

Out of the two of them, he felt like offering Katie some form of comfort would be a damn sight easier than offering it to Lily. But he had made sure to give Katie the same spanking as Lily had got, and the same would go for the aftermath – whatever he offered Katie here and now he'd have to go back and offer Lily.

And he wanted to…

Or, no, he didn't want to. What he wanted was to turn back time and catch them making their plans so they could both be turned off the idea before they took the risk of acting on it. Or at least to go back to yesterday when Lily'd come through the front door. God, if he'd just asked her how she got into such a mess, he was sure it would have all come tumbling out of her. But he hadn't asked, had he? No, he'd done his usual, he'd decided without bothering to question her that the reason she was so worked up was because of her sister and how much emphasise Rosie put on keeping things good.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, hard.

Thank you so much for your comments on the last chapter! Because this has been a slow burn and because I do want to write them becoming sexually active with one another in a way that is both sex positive and with Tommy being respectful and aware of the facts that she a) isn't experienced like he is and b) had a horrible introduction to sex by growing up around heterosexual, paid for sex that didn't place the woman's pleasure as being important, I feel like I have to get myself back into the swing of writing sex because it's been such a long route. And obviously they still have further to go but the last chapter was the most sort of explicitly taking the steps down that D/s route that I very much see them going down, so I very much appreciated the positive response to it!