A/N: Wow, what an ending for Season 5. I am also going to mention that we are finally approaching Season 2. With that, there might be some scenes from the show that are recognisable but I don't want to copy everything word for word with lines etc. That depends if there are any scenes you particularly want to see and if I can fit them in appropriately. I'd like Willa to be present for Alfie shenanigans with the Shelbys, for sure.

Either way, on with the newest chapter! I say this every time, but all feedback is so very appreciated and I am grateful for reviews, favourites, etc.


fourteen


Hysterical, I slumped against the floorboards, where some horrid wail rose from somewhere in the depths of me, sprouting from those darkened gaps in my gums where a tooth had fallen out. I rasped in hideous wheezes because my lungs had become flaccid, my limbs were not mine and still I lifted foreign hands to grip the bed-sheets and haul myself upward onto stiff legs. I fell toward the wardrobe, bashed myself against it, sank into its shirts to find a coat buried in its dense folds. I had stuffed it there after Cyril had chewed its hem into threadbare disuse.

I shrugged it onto weakened shoulders and stumbled toward the hall, collapsing onto the floorboards once more, gripping the rugs and crawling forward. Foreign hands touched me – Franny touched me, her mouth moving in a ripple of spasms yet somehow, I heard no sound, for there was only some thick, rattling din in my right eardrum.

Finally, I found tattered boots in the hall and I yanked them onto those unfamiliar feet, unattached and still in movement, as if invisible strings had latched themselves around my ankles and some unseen puppeteer danced me about the house, dragged me limp through the hall upstairs, dotted my footsteps against the stairs in a light patter, pushed me into the hall and held me there, motionless.

I awaited the twitch and tug of string, looked for the loom of a shadowed figure behind me, but there was only Franny, her silhouette shrouded from her spot atop the staircase. Her lips formed sounds left unheard, swallowed in that rising din, which swelled and swelled until I could hear nothing else.

The earth tilted once more; always tilting, like it had titled that same night in front of the flat and there had been blackened mush on that night, from skulls caved inward – had his skull been caved inward, already? Had all those thoughts and memories of us been ground into sickly-sweet blackness, already? I thought that I had more time with him. I always thought that I had more time with him. I stopped in the hall, snipped strings and thought: after all that God had thrown at him in the trenches, his death comes in the damp hollows of London, and our Margate shall never be, never be – and…

There came some rumbling moan from the living-room. Ollie stumbled into the hall in front of me, his left eyelid coated in a sheen of purplish trauma, puckered from his eyeball so that all he saw in this world came through a slit of flesh clipped together. He was lisping through that splintered tear on his lip, his words stained in blood. He chattered as if cold, but the house was warm and bright when it should never have been that way without Alfie. Franny had stoked the fire and she had closed all the windows, shut out that bleak dew from drizzle peppering the streets. But he was not here, and that was not how it was meant to be without him.

Feverish, I spat out droplets of my own from that darkened gap in my gums where my tooth had fallen out. I thought that if I reached into my mouth, I could just latch onto that darkened gap, and then all bad things could be pulled from me, pulled out on a pearl-like string, stretching ever further. Pulled like threads from a sewing-machine, pulled and pulled until I had spools upon spools of myself splayed out upon the floorboards. I could unfurl that rattle in my eardrums. I could unravel myself and start anew.

I am made of bad things, I told myself, and these bad things stole me from kin, stole me from Johnny, placed me in some foreign country with foreign people. I am made of bad things and they fester in my gums.

Cracking against me like the curl of thunder over Irish mountains, there was a frightful thumping upon our front-door. While I was still chey in the wet fields, I had always been terrified of thunder and Johnny had defended me from the cruelty of boy-cousins who had mocked me for my fright. Johnny once told me that thunder came from God shifting furniture around in Heaven; and what is there to fear in that, chey?

"Willa, if you go out there tonight," Ollie warned, "you will not return."

There was something knocking around my skull like it was knocking against the door. With each turn, it rolled along the bumps of my brain and smacked against its edges, thrown backward, until all coherent thoughts were crushed beneath it. I heard him like his words filtered downward from that distant place beyond the rattle, where all things were soft and nothing like the thumping shriek of a tinny whistle in my eardrums, nothing like the knocking in my skull.

"If what Franny told me was the truth, Ollie, and the Italians took him to kill him," I murmured slowly, staring absently ahead of myself, "…then my death has already happened."

Trembling hands stretched for the latch. Those hands were not mine, but I moved them all the same. I pulled off the chain and my skin bristled from the cold wind which blew into the hall, ruffled the coats and stirred my skirts. There stood Death before me; he wore a black cap drawn low over his dark brows, and a cigarette dangled from lips chapped like old turf, lips that he peeled apart for speech. His words had been hoarse and soft, warm and gentle.

In a tongue that I had not heard since I last spoken with Johnny, he said, "Spared your man from the fire, tonight. Killed the Italians what tried to kill him first. You married me, once, outside the caravans we had that night in Bonny Glen. I crafted you a ring from paper and placed it upon you, recognised by some other power."

I knew the purpose of what he had told me; trust. I looked at him closely, because even if the language had not told me, his features promised that he was kin – or that his blood was that of the Gypsies, at least, and I recalled a paper-ring from Bonny Glenn, memories that had long since been smothered by those years spent in that flat on Bell Road. His name was Kelly Lee, I realised. His brother had been murdered in a ditch many years ago, but that had been a time before paper-rings and promises recognised by other powers.

I drank in the pallor of his cheeks with just the faintest trace of red behind them. He was one of those boy-cousins who had mocked me for my fear of thunder yet asked for my hand in marriage like children did back then, just for the fun of it, tossing decorations onto the tree-branches and passing paper-rings between us. I had once called myself Willa Lee, as a child. I had shed myself of Sykes and shrugged his heritage onto me instead, like a coat, because all the girls had wanted to be married. It was a pastime event to push the girls toward a lad and craft paper-love for them along with it.

"Where?" I asked.

I had not said his name nor more than a word, but Kelly Lee had understood it just fine and plucked his cigarette from his mouth to look out toward the blackened street that watched us, its orange eyes glittering from the streetlights and sheets of rain pattering against it. He said, "Warehouse, down by the docks. Shot the skulls of Italians like we shot through the horses what could not ride anymore, in Bonny Glen. Do you recall that, do you?"

"And now?" I asked.

"In a house with old furniture," he answered. "It breathes, that house – more easily than he does, that house."

"Take me to him."

"Willa –…" Ollie called from behind, his tone laced in suspicion, for he had not understood our words. "You don't know this man, he could –…"

"She knows me, for she married me once before," Kelly Lee interrupted, his coal stare swirling into mine, for both of us had the eyes of the Gypsies. "She is kin – Johnny's and ours. He sent us, though the Shelbys do not know it. Johnny went against his orders for you, chey."

I had not heard the call of chey from cousins in such a long while that it washed over my skin like that cool breeze which often followed that first call of thunder from faraway over the hills and mountains, that nickname from another life. I had heard rumours about the Shelbys in childhood and in recent months. I had met a couple of them in passing when I was a girl, but most of the Shelbys had settled in Small Heath, a small slice of depression plopped between the other working-class burrows of Birmingham.

Separation from other cousins and families had been gradual. Some cousins thought the Shelbys too pompous after they had begun to live in houses, while other cousins mourned another family lost to settlement in a world that had wanted to weed out the nomads for centuries. It simply happened like that, for Gypsy families. Some left for towns whose houses were carved from soot, soot that had been put there by the choking lungs of its factories. Others had left for coastal towns and looked out toward the sea, more isolated than they had ever been.

Yet if there was anything that settled Gypsies shared with nomadic Gypsies apart from blood, it was this: both were hated in equal measure, whether their homes had wheels or brick, whether their tongues clicked in familiar or foreign tongues, whether their eyes had come out black and hardened from the dirt roads or cobbled streets. It was all the same, to them.

Kelly Lee had lost his brother to such hatred.

"Come, Willa," Kelly Lee murmured.

"Please, Willa – just wait –…"

Reaching for my wrist, Ollie tried to tether me. Only I could never let myself be tethered when there were still storms to be had. I shook myself from him but cupped his cheeks and held my forehead against his own like I had often done with Alfie, because it felt as if some of my thoughts seeped into him. Once I pulled away, Ollie nodded as if he had understood. Or perhaps he had simply resigned himself to the fact that he could never hold me there.

"Call me if you can, from wherever you are. Let me know that you're all right."

His hand fell from mine and we were pulled apart. I stepped out into the blistering rain which sliced my skin in its harsh, needling pin-pricks. I darted toward the car that idled by the curb. Kelly Lee followed, his cigarette cast from him in a final spin of light, fizzling out into the sewers. He sidled into his side of the car and clapped his door shut behind him. The rain was softened, the cocoon of the car muffling its harshness.

"Ready yourself," Kelly Lee said, "for your man is not well. He balances, chey."

I understood that, too. He balanced between our world and another. "Alfie has always balanced there, Kelly. He likes the challenge. He takes pride in it, he does."

Kelly Lee looked at me in the black of night. "Then his pride will line his coffin."

ii

Rattling through dirt-roads, I saw the flash of white eyeballs from the foxes peeking out from behind the shrubbery, pale glimpses from the woodlands of the creatures buried within. There were very few houses dotted along this winding path whittled between the trees, made of faint dots bleeding orange into the night. It disturbed me, those houses out there. Passing each house, I wondered if that was the house. I wondered if Alfie sat behind those orange windows and waited for me.

"What did you mean," I began, "when you said Johnny went against the Shelbys?"

Kelly Lee glanced out toward the trees which sprinkled rain onto the roads, soaked them so much that they looked like black rivers and rippled like the tongue of the devil, forked and licking at us from below.

He shrugged his shoulders. "The Shelbys are looking to move into the London scene. Their lad Tommy has made quite a name for himself. A proper name. He wanted the Lee boys for some protection, to establish some kind of base before he brings the rest of his lot to the city for a takeover. Johnny was only meant to scout the place for a week or so, but he left some lads behind and asked that they keep watch over you. Never told Thomas Shelby, from what I understand, given that I was one of them."

"And where were you earlier?" I asked drily.

"Earlier," he hummed. "Well, earlier, I was questioned by a copper when I went into Ivor Square – for what would a pikey be doing in a nice neighbourhood like yours if not stealing from it, eh? The Jew has brought you much wealth, has he not, chey?"

I bristled at the bitter undertone which filled him, because it was filled with that same old mockery of those settled, of those with bricks beneath their feet rather than soil. I was also ruffled by that loathing which dripped from him once he spoke of Alfie and his faith, along with this fixation on his wealth.

"Much more," I replied tightly. "And the rings that Alfie brings me never disappear in rain, Kelly Lee."

The foxes watched us from the fields and the devil laughed in black rivers.

iii

The windowpanes had been coated in thickened dust which meant that the watery, yellow colour from within the house seeped out in a weak trickle, barely reaching the gravel which scattered the driveway. The roof was made of patchwork slates and the paint on its walls had been chipped, its garden overgrown in thistles which rustled and sang in the bleak downpour which speckled our skin and soaked us through to the bone.

Kelly Lee tapped his familiar rhythm against the splinter of a wooden door which stood before him, its knocker in the form of a lion having long since lost its golden shine. He murmured codewords in a particular order and the door cracked open, the sheen of a barrel slipping into the waistline of another cousin. It was Mitchell Lee – another brother, who had not yet been murdered in a ditch.

"Chey."

Stepping around Mitchell with a curt nod, I looked about the withered heart of this house and I never saw my own held within it. I ached all the more for it. I had hoped he might be there, stood in its hall, prepared for the journey back to the city despite possible wounds and bruises. I had tried to pretend that Kelly Lee had exaggerated in some futile attempt to protect myself from the truth.

I had known Kelly Lee well enough to understand that he had never lied about much in his life apart from two things: the first lie had been that he was not desperate for revenge after the death of his older brother, and the second lie had been that he had never truly wanted to marry me with that paper-ring at all.

I knew this because Johnny had mentioned him once in those letters found in the flat on Bell Road, those letters which had been hidden from me by Esther and in which Johnny had written: Kelly Lee often mentions you, chey.

It was a hint, although not a very subtle one, from Johnny. Johnny might not have completely approved of a marriage between us, but he had hoped for some kind of elopement before I turned fifteen or sixteen, because all the girls in our families married around then, usually. I was just the exception.

Yet I noticed how Kelly Lee hovered close and wondered if he thought that it could be resolved despite the fact that we were not children anymore. I thought that because I glanced around and saw all the mirrors covered in dense blankets to conceal them; our custom which came from a fear that the souls of the dead might become trapped in that little slice of glass, trapped between one world and the next.

And they thought that Alfie might die.

"Just a curtesy, chey," Mitchell muttered in his gruff manner, leading us through the halls of the house.

Shattered furniture was scattered around, the fabric of sofas tattered and riddled from moths, curtains drawn in depression, shards of broken plates speckled on mouldy carpet and cracking beneath our boots. The wallpaper was peeling in great sheets, yellowed and crinkled around its edges. Laundry-lines had been strung between chairs and rafters, draped in damp shirts and pants – some of them belonged to the Lee brothers, but I recognised a shirt as one that I had made, a shirt that had been made just for him. He had always worn every shirt that I had made him. Even when he had been shot, he had been in a shirt that I had made him.

His socks were there, too. Although I was not sure of the reason, that made me weep more than all the rest.

Climbing the staircase, I saw more ruined bedrooms along a narrow strip of hallway. Plasterwork had lined the ceiling of the master bedroom in swirling patterns of delicate flowers with petals stretching outward, vines trickling downward toward wallpaper now torn off in strips, as if some maddened creature had ripped it all apart along with himself in this place.

Fluttering in pale tremors, there was a thin sheet of lace attached to the windows, exhaling a ghostly light into the staleness of the bedroom. There was a portrait too, its subject slashed. It was a woman, I realised, her pale eyes blinking out from the curl of her canvas folded over. The fireplace was collapsed inward, dust from its stone spat out onto the rug in front of it.

And there he was; swallowed in the pleats of the bed-sheets, arms spread outward, he looked toward that detailed plasterwork but saw nothing of its petals.

He had been mangled by them.

Looking more closely, I saw that his left arm was oddly bent, his wrists swollen in purple. I glimpsed the gash in his forehead, which split his right eyebrow and left crusted blood around his socket. I dropped onto the floorboards, crawled toward him, gripped his limp hands and bowed my head against the mattress, sobbing even more after I heard his rasping breaths. I saw the stuttered rise of his chest and its violent fall.

They had covered the mirrors for him. I saw him now and knew that they had been right to do it.

Looking behind, I saw Mitchell Lee slink from the bedroom, his large boots crinkling against shreds of newspaper. Kelly stood in the threshold for just a moment more, his eyes looking into mine, before he went after his brother and left us in this bedroom, in this house that was not ours. I knew that if Alfie had a choice, he would have chosen to remain in our home in Ivor Square, where there was warmth and love. This house had once held that; but now it was a husk, and its rotting innards stared at us in blank detachment.

"Willa," he called out, unseeing.

"I'm here, sweetheart," I whispered, stroking his hair with the lightest touch. I was afraid to hurt him, to damage him more than they already had.

"Ruined another shirt you made me, I did. I'm sorry, treacle."

I let out a weak laugh, smiling at him. "Don't fret, Alfie. I have loads more waiting for you at home."

Squeezing his hands, I leaned forward and pressed my lips against his own in a quick peck, intending to pull away from him. Instead, he raised a hand with fingers swollen at the knuckles, unable to bend, but he cupped my nape and held me against his chest. I felt him burrow himself into my hair and I felt him inhale so deeply. His thumb swept awkwardly against my cheek, rigid and stiff. His lips pressed against the hollow of my throat and probed the bruises there.

"Fuck, I never thought I'd see your fuckin' smile again," he told me.

He was quiet for a little while, breathing into me.

Then he said, "I didn't fear me own death nearly as much as I feared yours after they told me Sabini 'ad come 'round to talk to ya, Willa. And they 'ad the fuckin' gun against me 'ead and I weren't ready for any goodbyes just yet, 'cause we ain't seen Margate yet, 'ave we? But I thought, 'least Willa might get there even if I don't' –…"

"It's all right, Alfie," I hushed, still stroking his hair. "Here we are, together. And it isn't Margate, but that doesn't matter when I'm with you, darling."

His eyes had fluttered shut, bloodshot and worn. He had heard me, anyway. I felt it in how his thumbs still tried to brush my knuckles like he had always done, even when it hurt him to do it. I stood and tucked blankets around him, settled a pillow beneath his head. I sat beside him then, let him rest his head in my lap and prayed to God for the first time since the pantry that he would make it through this night and all others ahead of us.

iv

Stepping out into the garden, where the Lee brothers stood beneath a tarp in front of an old shed with its windowpanes smashed, I breathed dew and fire blended together. Kelly Lee looked at me, the smoke of his cigarette curling upward and caressing his sharp cheekbones, shrouding him in a heavy veil behind which I thought there had once been a boy of nine with love in his heart for me. He lifted his hand to pull that cigarette from his mouth and crushed it beneath his heel.

"Tell me about this Thomas Shelby."

Mitchell shrugged his shoulders. "You knew him as a lad, chey. What more is there to tell you?"

"Made a name for himself," I said, looking directly at Kelly. "You told me that yourself. What kind of name has he made, that he wants to come to London? He wants this for himself, does he?"

"Thomas has been beaten himself, you know," Kelly murmured. "Laid out on beds like your man with blood in his mouth. He has established himself, Willa. He runs Birmingham now. He wants to branch out."

"Then he needs connections, friends – kin," I replied.

"You would do well to stay away from the Shelbys," Mitchel told me. "Or your man will not lie on a bed but rather on cold ground. The Shelbys are cursed, always have been. Involve yourself with them, Willa, and you will carry that curse on your own shoulders."

There was a faint rumble from beyond the mountains; the heavens cried in lightning and thunder came slowly from over the hills, between the drizzle and wind. I was not so afraid of it anymore. It was a dark night, out there in a place that had no name, and the Lee brothers blended into that darkness with bleak expressions. I heard their words and thought best to heed them, until I thought of the Italians and that call of kitten from a copper in an alleyway, felt alien hands touch me in some bastardised imitation of how Alfie touched me, all strokes and gentle squeezes. I was tired of being touched, tired of the scale tipping more in favour of the Italians than Alfie.

"You are involved with them, aren't you?"

"And look at our fucking shoulders now," Kelly retorted harshly. "It was an arrangement that formed between our family and theirs – Esme married into the Shelbys, made a pact that cannot be broken."

Esme had been another cousin, much more faintly remembered for her dark eyes and darker wit, and her husband had probably since learned that she was a woman made from fire. She had always fizzled and burnt and grew ever more powerful in her own way. I had always admired her for that.

"And Johnny?" I asked.

"Middleman," Mitchell answered. "Used his golden tongue and wove a bond between us all, while he sits pretty. But Thomas has drawn him in more and more lately. He came to London not two weeks ago."

"He never told me."

Kelly laughed. "Johnny is a wise man, Willa. He dances around his words the same way he dances for pennies. Whistles his own tune, does Johnny. And that is how he has made it this long, when all the old Gypsies thought Johnny would never make it more than a summer."

Outwardly, I maintained a cool expression. Internally, I felt a swell of shock at what he had said, given that Johnny had never mentioned that the old Gypsies thought that about him in the same way that they thought that about me, when I was born. But Kelly had been right: Johnny had used words, danced around others, used mind over brawn, made the bonds that Kelly had described, and almost always managed to slip out of things through those same bonds. He used words.

He used words.

v

Sinking into a dented basin, he let out a deep, grateful sigh and settled there while I dipped a cloth into that steaming water and wet his hair. I cleaned the blood from his cuts and kissed each one, before I brushed a fresh bar of soap around his arms, over his chest. He sunk beneath the water for a moment. I sat on the stool and watched him, wiping my brow.

It had taken me and the Lee brothers together to fill this basin with the buckets found littered around the house. Then, the brothers had hauled him into the bathroom, and I had tried to carry his legs, despite the pain in my own bones from the effort. I trembled from it but tried to still my hands around him, knowing that it would only upset him.

"He looks at you."

Alfie had resurfaced, droplets plopping from his eyelashes. I knew that he meant Kelly, because it had only been a few days in this house and already Alfie had recovered more quickly than expected, spurred by his desire to return to London and retaliate against Sabini.

"We knew each other when we were kids, Alfie. His family are kin."

Alfie stared at me. He was so still that the water barely even rippled around him. "Right."

"Jealousy does not become you."

"Jealous? Me? Nah," he scoffed. "Only worried that I won't 'ave anyone 'round to scratch me arse if you fuck off with your own fuckin' cousin. And I don't reckon the other brother would be so willin' to wash me bits and bobs, neither."

I laughed and picked a jug from the ground to scoop water from the basin, washing the lather from his hair. He leaned back against the basin, letting me clean away the dirt and crusted blood while I massaged his scalp. I smiled fondly at him. The wind howled outside and rattled the windowpanes. There was no warmth in this house other than the warmth that came from him whenever I held him, touched him, spoke with him.

Alfie was my warmth in this foreign place out in the fields, a terrain that I had long since forgotten, like I had long since forgotten distant cousins, like I had long since forgotten paper-rings and Bonny Glen, like I had forgotten lions that had long since lost their shine.

"We married when we were children," I explained softly. He was pliant in my palms. He let me speak, his eyes staring ahead at things that I could not see. "But it was a game for children, then, marriage. Nothing real, just for fun. He made me a little ring out of paper, and I took his surname for the week that we lived in the same field, before we had been separated. His brother died, I remember. Killed for his blood. His family went their own way. Johnny went another, took me along with him. Off to England, soon enough. Perhaps he was afraid for me, after Kelly's brother had been killed. People hated the Gypsies then as much as they do now, Alfie."

Despite his jokes, I knew that Alfie was bothered by Kelly Lee and his watchful eye upon me. Kelly had not approached me in any forceful manner, never called me kitten, never even touched me if it was not necessary. But he lingered there, in my peripheral. I often noticed how his eyes followed me and wondered if he had wished for Alfie to die on that bed in a house that was not his own.

"It was a game for children, Alfie," I murmured, chasing the suds from his skin and smiling at how he relaxed beneath my hands. "And if it had been Kelly Lee that I wanted, I would be there with him now."

"You prob'ly should be there with 'im," he replied, closing his eyes when I kissed his jawline. "Could do with a fuckin' wash – fuckin' stinks, 'e does. Smelled corpses in the trenches with better 'ygiene than 'im."

"Now you're just being petty."

He was distracted by my wandering hands, my sleeves becoming damp from dipping beneath the water to reach for him. "Petty? Me? Nothin' o' the sort –…" – I gripped him, and he hissed, letting out a surprising moan at my touch – "…fuck, Willa –…"

"Only washing your bits and bobs, like you said. Although perhaps I should stop," I mused. "You are injured, after all."

"Suffered more wounds in the war," he said, "than a couple o' slaps from a wop what 'its like a little girl. Still me-self, ain't I?"

I bit lightly at his earlobe and whispered, "Then prove it to me, Alfie Solomons."

vi

Moonlight filled the hall where Kelly Lee stood and cleaned his guns. His silhouette echoed in blue frost, his shoulders hunched close together over his weapons. Mitchell had gone out into the garden and looked around its hedges, a routine check of the land. He looked for footprints in the soil, peered into the blackness of our surroundings for the flash of white eyeballs.

I thought that Kelly had not noticed me, until he asked, "Won't you come and join us for some dinner, Willa?"

I followed him into the front-room, where a small pit of stones and dirt had been gathered. A rabbit sliced of its pelt and plucked of its organs lay flaccid and limp across a Persian rug, its glassy eyeballs staring ahead into nothingness. I sat upon a stool much like the stool in the bathroom. He settled in an armchair across from me.

"Remember the first time I saw a car, me," he said suddenly. "Thought it was some beast with orange eyes, blinking out at me from a laneway. Ran from it like I ran from real beasts. Your man owns a car, Willa."

"He owns many."

Kelly nodded. "And what have all those cars brought him, when he lies up there on that bed?"

"Out with it, Kelly."

He licked his lips. "There are many in our family who think you were wrong to tie yourself to the Jew, chey."

"Do you count yourself among them?"

He hesitated, but finally nodded. "You were taken from kin, put in a world that was not yours. Johnny offered you a chance to be welcomed back into it."

Bristling, I remembered what Johnny had written in his letter: perhaps I might find a Gypsy fellow for you while I am there, in sweet Tipperary. There was much talk after what happened, chey. I looked at Kelly Lee and figured that he had hoped to be that Gypsy fellow and that the talk had come from him as much as it had come from all his kin, because Alfie was both foreign through his non-Gypsy blood and even more foreign for his Jewish faith, all of which made him a prime target for distrust and wariness.

"I have not rejected my kin, Kelly. Only added to it."

He let out a bitter laugh. "Esther and her lot first, eh? And without them, then, you settle for the Jews."

"I settle for nothing."

"And if Solomons had died at the hands of the Italians, would you have married another?"

"I am not married now," I told him. "And still I would not marry after."

He drew back into his chair. "What would Johnny think of that, eh?" he asked.

"He would think it a missed opportunity for an open bar at the reception of a wedding that never took place."

"How do the Jews marry, then?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "With rings and love and lots of dancing. Much like Gypsies, it seems."

"Not so different after all, is that it?" he smiled, the bitterness drained from his tone. "I lost you a long time ago, chey. It was another place, another time – for children, it was. But if I worry for you, it is only from what Johnny has told us. You took bullets for that man that lies above us. He has already started digging your grave. He will be the one to place you in it, too. He denies it, only because he believes that denial. But I look at him and I see the shovel in his hand and the dirt on his hands already. I know what is coming."

"You think that you hold the foresight that your grandmother holds, Kelly Lee?" I asked tensely.

"Not all things must come from foresight and Gypsy blood, chey," he told me, his eyes glistening in the diluted moonlight from beyond the curtains. "Some things come from another kind of knowing, made from something else. Not foresight, but something close to it. Experience, perhaps. I have seen many Gypsies put in ditches by those who could not understand them, Willa. By those who thought they could control them."

I paused at the mention, however indirect, of his brother. I looked away from his harsh stare and found another portrait across the hall, in a dining-room with patches of mould sprouting from its skirting boards. In it, many horses stood in poses with strong legs lifted and mouths frothing against reigns, twisted bodies turned against stormy skies behind them, tails whipped into powerful frenzies. In the midst of all those horses, there stood a black stallion in perfect stillness.

"I need you to send a letter for me, Kelly Lee," I said quietly. "And I need you to do it tonight, while Alfie sleeps."

I told him what I wanted in it and he listened with his mouth held in a tight line, before he eventually pulled another cigarette from his pocket and placed it between his lips. "Adding more to your kin, Willa?"

"No," I replied. "Not adding. Only rediscovering the kin lost long before my ninth summer."

vii

Clunking over bumps in the dirt-roads in these rolling fields, the car finally reached much smoother lanes and Alfie straightened tense shoulders, his hand occasionally gripping the seats from the pain which rushed his spine and tightened him at the hip. Sometimes, his eyes rose to glare at the Lee brothers. He had convinced himself that the brothers purposefully drove over hard lumps to bother him. He would have preferred it if a couple of Jewish lads had come out to collect him, I knew. Still, I saw the relief in his eyes at the sight of Camden Town and especially the first glimpse of our house on Ivor Square.

It had been a month since we had seen it; a month that we had spent in that house with rusted buckets and finely-decorated ceilings crumbling to dust.

Opening the door, I held still for a moment and listened. The sound came very suddenly, a loud clacking and a sudden bundle of fur barrelling toward me, smacking right into my stomach and winding me. I held him tightly against me, scratching him and kissing him all over his soft floppy ears.

"Hello, my beautiful boy, how I have missed you," I mumbled, pressing my face into Cyril's neck.

"Didn't even show me that much affection," Alfie grumbled behind me. "Always for the fuckin' dog, never for ol' Alfie –…"

"I showed you plenty, if you recall," I replied. "In the basin, in the bedroom, in the –…"

"Please, don't say anymore."

Both Alfie and I glanced up at Ollie. He walked out of the kitchen with a pained wince on his face, drying his hands on a towel. I burst into laughter and rushed to hug him, squeezing him tightly. Alfie shuffled forward, his limp so pronounced that even a cane could not mask it for the moment, not until it healed properly, because he already had problems with his hip and spine and the Italians had only worsened it.

"If you don't forget what you 'eard, Ollie," Alfie said, passing by him, "you'll never get that fuckin' raise."

"But you already gave it to me," Ollie mumbled, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

I grinned, eyes widening. "Is that right, Alfie? After you told me you'd only think about it?"

"Right, well," he groaned, "must'a slipped me mind – what with an Italian stompin' on me skull and all that. Makes you go fuzzy, don' it, gettin' your loaf knocked about by a wop?"

"Speaking of loaves, Alfie, about the bakery –…" Ollie started. However, he looked at Alfie and his words died a sudden death.

I glanced behind Ollie and spotted the wounded dip in Alfie's shoulders once he lifted his foot to pull himself onto the first step of the staircase. I took off my coat and placed it on the stand. I shifted around Ollie and thanked him for taking care of the house before I followed Alfie, gently placing my hands on his arms.

"Come on, Alfie," I whispered, "your turn to run me a bath now, isn't it?"

"Do I get to wash ya like you washed me, eh?"

I grinned at the wicked look in his eyes.

Behind us, Ollie called out, "I can still hear you."

Reaching the top of the staircase, Alfie promptly turned around and said, "Fuck off, Ollie."

viii

Sometime in the evening, I heard his light breaths and watched his chest rise more gently now, without all those stuttering rasps and pained moans. I stroked his stubble and fixed the collar of his pyjamas, inwardly praying that he might recover even sooner. I was grateful to hold him, touch him, lie beside him in this house – our house, the only home that I had ever really known and the only home that I had ever loved. I leaned forward and pressed a kiss against his cheek, on that patch of stubble which never grew properly.

Then, I stood from the bed and shushed Cyril who tried to trot after me. I bent and kissed him between his eyes and whispered, "You stay here, darling. I need you to take care of our old man, don't I?"

Cyril returned to his bed, resting his muzzle on his paws and watching me step out into the hall. I closed the door carefully, taking to the staircase with very delicate steps. Ollie was in the guest bedroom, too, probably reading a book since it was still light out. I tread into the hall downstairs and pulled my coat from the pile. I grabbed a scarf and tied it around my throat, wincing after I accidentally bumped against some faded bruises.

I looked at myself in the mirror by the door; there was power in the eyes that looked back at me.

ix

Rich, golden curtains had been draped upon the arch which stood at the entrance, glittering overhead as I stepped into the swirl of heady smoke from cigars and the sweet tang of liquor floating underneath it. Slowly, I walked by couples pressed against walls with legs lifted and hands pressing into certain parts. Pretty girls passed in shimmering dresses with pearls strung around prominent collarbones, clacking in heels with lips pouted in scarlet. Gaudy statues lined the hall, made of large breasts and lithe waists, dreamy expressions contorted in pleasure, hands clasped around bowls of fruit.

I had lined my eyes in blackened kohl but left my lips bare. I wore a black dress, too, plain and made of glinting buttons along its centre. I felt the eyes of patrons looking toward me. It was a predicament for them. I was a Gypsy with tangled, black hair that sprung outward like a mane. However, I was also with Alfie Solomons in all senses, and that made them hesitate to approach and chuck me out of their establishment for fear that he might burn it down within the hour.

Cold, greyish tendrils of smoke parted; he sat between the folds of that same smoke, which had been blown from his own lips.

He seemed to be alone, but I knew that he probably had men all around him, hidden behind the clinking bottles and shrieking fits of laughter from clients whose nostrils had been lined in snow. He had pale, ghostly eyes. The colour reminded me of the light that had filled that house in the countryside, left it void of warmth and love. It made me want to look away from him.

And because of that, I never let my eyes stray from his.

"Chey," he murmured softly, the sound of it soon swept away in the waves of drunken cacophony all around him. "What a pleasure it was to receive your letter – a surprise, as well, I must admit."

"Well," I said, settling into my chair and shedding my coat. "I thought it was about time I welcomed my kin to the great city of London."

I smiled at him and felt the fresh tingle of bad things in my gums once Thomas Shelby returned it.