A/N: I turned on a playlist of Massive Attack and maybe that is why this chapter turned out the way that it did lol. I appreciate all reviews and favourites. It means a lot to me to read any feedback and see people like this story. I hope you like this chapter just as much (if it does not make you a little bit sad lolll but this is Peaky Blinders my friends). I wanted to make it clear that trauma and bad things are not just forgotten with each chapter and they do build up. I thought this largely because of the episode in which Tommy gets his 'holiday' thanks to Arthur and almost suffers a breakdown. Anyway, on with the chapter...!

Also I can't reply to guests directly, but Eemmah, your review was very kind, thank you so much for that!


nineteen


Soon enough, a nurse came and took him from me, settled him into the crook of the arms of his mother, arms which were not mine and still I held them outward in some bizarre imitation, before they fell limp at my side and I looked at the tiles beneath me, scuffed and worn. The nurse stirred Franny from her sleep. Gently, she helped lower the collar of her gown, exposed her breast, helped guide her son toward it because he might not latch onto it so easily; the art of nursing a babe, the nurse said.

I stood from the bed and fiddled with the pearl bracelet around my wrist. I forced out this horrid pretence of a smile which made my cheeks wobble and ache when Franny looked over at me. I swallowed my bitterness like the baby swallowed milk and that was all that I could do, then. I unfolded my coat and stepped around the curtain, sweeping it shut behind me to allow Franny her comfort in a hospital filled in cold blue.

I heard the cries of babies all around me, in that hall; that stuff that I ain't sure we'd ever 'ave – what Franny and Ollie 'ave now.

I saw his silhouette at the end of it. His broad frame was leaned against a wall painted in powder green, his back turned against me, uncomfortable in the rush and swell of nurses all around him – the war had made him like that, and all those nights spent with me after I had been shot had made him like that. Still, he waited and suffered through his intense dislike of loud noises and distant bangs from the corridors like a labyrinth all around him, a constant echo washed against him. I glimpsed the harsh spasms in his shoulders, rolled against the sounds. I watched his hand lift and scratch at those raw patches of skin on his hairline to hurt himself anew.

He waited there for me while he bled and tore himself asunder.

I had waited like that for him while he was in France. I still bled from it, and all my parts had not been made whole. I could not function in some places because of it. Was that why my arms raised for a bundle that had already been taken from me?

Alfie had filled my arms with other things. He had placed in them the material of each apron made by my hands, jewels slopping from between my fingertips, Cyril curled in my palms when he was still a pup. He had given me gifts that could not be held because he had taught me to read and write, taught me that love was not made of scratched blankets and a small bowl of porridge pushed toward me only if I had stolen enough handkerchiefs and purses for that night. After he had come back from France, he had left me alone for a month. Ever since then, we had never been apart; we slept together, rose and ate and worked together.

I heard the cries of babies all around me.

I wondered what he loved about me that made him want me in the way that he did. I was sure that if I asked him right there in the hall, he would have named each piece and part, even those parts that I feared were broken. He said that he never wanted babies because of this life that we were in, made of dog-fights and bullets and all that other stuff that kept him awake some nights, sealed in his office with blue moods along its seams.

But surely, he must have dreamt of another life with a Jewish girl who understood his rituals and who could hold out their child in her arms, made of his nose and her mouth, his hair and her complexion?

Alfie twitched even more, unsettled by the sudden jerk of metal from carts rattled forward by straight-faced nurses milling around him. I saw some limp body stretched out on a gurney with blood pouring from between its lips and I knew that it was too much for him, that perhaps it had set off some faint memories of France.

I rushed toward him and rested my hands on his arms, reached upward to hold him in a hug against my chest, stroking the nape of his neck. He held me so tightly that it made me think of Arthur for a moment, that frantic hold with hands trembling against the fabric of my blouse. I knew that if he would have hated for anybody else to see him in such a state.

His eyelids fluttered, his blank stare drawn toward me in bewilderment, as if he had forgotten that he was here in the hospital. He croaked, "Thought I were in France, after that fella slashed me up in the trenches – I told ya 'bout that, didn't I, Willa? Did I tell ya?"

"You did, Alfie," I murmured, "But I'm right here with you. You're not in France, anymore, sweetheart."

"Not in France," he repeated.

"I bet Cyril is waiting for us," I told him softly, brushing his cheek with my hand. "Probably wondering where his dinner is, by now. I'm wondering the same thing."

He smiled and although it was shaky, I knew that the worst of it was over for him, his arm settling into the crook of my elbow and leading us out toward the street where a car awaited us. Stepping out of the hospital, he replied, "I don't know who I fear more when they're 'ungry – you or the fuckin' dog."


ii

But we would have made beautiful babies, all the same. I dreamt of that child, suddenly; his nose and my mouth, his hair and my complexion.


iii

I looked at him in the car and thought: if he dies in this war that he has made for himself, there will be nothing left of us, nothing worth wrapping in a blanket – nothing made of him and nothing made of me, not now that he has already planned his death, accepted it. He made that will for you, he has said his goodbyes to you like he said them before France. The only difference between that one and the ones which came just before the war is that this one was written on paper and you will be alone. And with him you share a bed and a workplace and love in-between, so what will it matter to anyone else?

You don't share his surname.


iv

Orange light warmed him from a passing streetlight, softening his skin. His hands held mine, like they always did in the cars and in the house and just before bed when he kissed them, kissed my cheeks, kissed me, and I felt myself wilt from the pressing guilt of thinking all these things, petals furled inward and withered. I let him take off my coat and I let him kiss at my throat, my collarbone, his fervent expression of love that felt more like apologies for the hospital and for arms left unfilled.

Only that was not his fault and had never been his fault, because he had never lied about it, never said that he wanted them or that it might happen at some other point – but he said that it would not happen in Ivor Square and it would not happen in that house upon the cliffside in Margate, so when else could it be, for us?

With his lips pressed against mine, I knew that he wanted to muffle the words which might have spilled out from me if he had not done it, because he had felt that heaviness draped around me like a coat after I held that little child with his skin mottled in shades of pink from birth, his mouth licking at words not yet capable of being formed.

I felt his frustration and worry with each feverish peck against my skin, felt pushed into some blank form of movement with hands placed on his shoulders and foreheads pushed together. He kissed those spots that he knew excited me, his lips shrivelled into pain once I was still placid and compliant against him, not at all made of passion.

But I could only look at the world and see it in one colour; and that colour was blue.

"I told you," he said, "I told you, Willa."

"I know," I said. "I know."

His kisses found my jawline, tried to lift my mouth into a smile with his own, tried fruitlessly to push it into any shape other than the wobbling line that it was in before he finally pushed away from me, strings of the same instrument pulled apart. He scrunched the cuff of his shirt in his hand and wiped at his forehead and lips as if to rid himself of me. He parted his lips not for another kiss, but rather for words that never came, not yet capable of being formed.

He whistled for Cyril and went into the kitchen. I heard the crackle of the radio soon afterward, blared so loudly that it echoed throughout the emptiness of the house; and yet still it did not feel full enough.


v

In the morning, he brought me a breakfast made of toast and eggs and a teapot shared between us with all the more sugar because he knew that I liked it sweeter than he did. The looming windows in the bedroom had wide ledges with black railings stabled around them, ledges which overlooked the street like the balcony in Margate. He had opened those windows in the fuzzy grey of dawn. I heard the pattering of rain against the cobbled street outside while he placed the breakfast on my lap with a kiss against my temple.

Alfie had always been soft on me.

I finished my toast and drank that sweetened tea before I stood and went toward the wardrobe. I pulled out a fresh shirt for Alfie and found his favourite golden bands for his sleeves, smoothing out the creases while I placed it against the bed. I took brief glances at him, his eyes looking out at those droplets plopping from overhead our windows.

His hand scratched Cyril who sat alongside his chair, his chocolate eyes taking sneaky glances at the toast which was still left from our breakfast, thickened drool then drooping from his muzzle in anticipation. Cyril liked warm toast with butter, and he knew that Alfie rarely finished his food, especially in the mornings when his thoughts were elsewhere.

He was terribly clever, our Cyril, because he knew that Alfie was just as soft on him as he was on me.

"Willa," Alfie called. "Come 'ere."

Confused, I turned to him with his pants still curled over my arms. I placed those on the bed, too, just beneath the pressed shirt before I padded toward him and took his hand outstretched, surprised once he hauled me against him and settled me on his lap. I felt one hand rest right against the small of my back, the other holding the hand that I had placed against his chest.

"Today, all them lads what Tommy sent are comin' 'round to the bakery. Billy Kitchen and Tommy will be comin' with 'em, settlin' in 'em," he told me gruffly. "And I am gonna bring 'em into the office, give 'em their documents and the aprons what you made 'em. But I want you to stay away from 'em, right."

I scoffed, pushing from him to stand, because I thought it was just another rush of jealousy from Alfie much like that night in the kitchen and I was tired of accusations and suggestions when I had only ever been faithful to him. But his hands clamped tight on me, held me there against him with such force that I almost stumbled in shock, taken aback by the severity of his stare and the tightness of his grip.

"I ain't messin' with ya, Willa," he warned. "They ain't lads what I know from me younger days, and they ain't lads what I knew from France. They don't know us 'round 'ere, don't know 'ow it goes in London. Some of 'em might look at it like an 'oliday, yeah? But they'll learn soon enough. If you go 'round the bakery, you try and go with Ollie or me-self, right? Even Cyril – they don't need to know that 'e drools more than 'e fuckin' bites."

I looked at him closely. I traced the furrow of his brow and his mouth turned downward, felt the harsh hold of his hands and his eyes blazing in a plea to understand the meaning behind them, because all that had happened in the pantry all those years beforehand had not only affected me, I realised. He had not stood in its dryness with me, had not felt hands in places that had once only belonged to him. I knew that he cared enough, that he loved me enough to make all those rules in his bakery.

So, I leaned forward and kissed that furrow between his brow and whispered, "Old man, always telling me what to do, eh?"

He dipped me backward from his lap, his hand latched around my waist to ensure that I did not tumble from him, grinning at my shriek of laughter and scramble to catch his neck. "Old man – is that right? We ain't that far apart, y'know – I'll be givin' you that cane o' mine soon enough –…"

"Let me up –…"

"I quite like you this way, actually. Your skirt is slippin' up, Willa, gettin' a proper show 'ere."

I let out an indignant yelp, releasing his neck in an effort to push down the hem of my skirt and slapping at his hand which reached to push it even further up my thighs. He pulled me up and held his lips against mine and it was nothing like the night beforehand, when I had been too blue to do much more than let him. I kissed him with all the heat that I had in me. I was a little too forward in cupping his cheeks too, because he placed his elbow on the table behind him to steady us both but knocked into his plate of toast which slid sideways.

Cyril leapt forward, snatching the crust and pulling the plate along with it, which smashed against the floorboards. He blinked once, toast still in his mouth, then turned to find his bed to eat in comfort.

"Cyril, you fuckin' –…"

Alfie trailed off because my laughter drowned him out, his own annoyance slipping into amusement. He placed his arm beneath my legs and the other at my back, hauling me up into the air once he stood, grinning at how I rushed to hold on his neck once more.

"Alfie, your back, you'll do yourself a mischief carrying me around like this –…"

"Being a gentleman like me Mum taught me, ain't I? Can't 'ave a beautiful lady steppin' on all this glass," he replied, bouncing me in his arms.

Then it came: he bent forward, his face contorted in a sudden burst of agony. He almost dropped us both against the floorboards with how his pain rippled through him. I quickly shook myself from his arms and caught myself, standing properly to hold his arms and guide him toward the bed. I rushed for that jar of mush still in the drawers, scooping out lumps to smooth against his back and hip. He arched against the mattress at the touch of my skin against him, but soon relaxed into the pillows, rubbing off the sweat that had formed on his temples from the pain.

I dabbed it around his hip and playfully murmured, "Old man. I'll protect you from those bad fellas from Birmingham today, don't you worry."

He let out a sound between a laugh and a hiss from the pressure. "Seein' 'ow you dealt with Rachel, I ain't worried at all, darlin'."

"I told you not to carry me. Didn't I tell you?"

"Old woman, always tellin' me what to do."

I pinched his arm and delighted in the slew of cursing which followed. Cyril hopped onto the bed, his large paws sinking into the blankets and stepping all over the clothes that I had left out for Alfie. I found myself unable to care too much about it, too full of the giddiness and lightness which cast out all the blue for a little while. I watched the dog shuffle forward and place his muzzle against Alfie, in the crook of his neck, coating him in drool and butter.

"As soft as you are, Willa, this fuckin' dog," Alfie said, reaching his hand back to rub Cyril. "Always stealin' me fuckin' toast like you do, too."

"I'll tell Ollie that you couldn't make it in today," I told him, putting the jars back into the drawer.

"You do that," he smirked. "And tell Tommy that I was lookin' forward to seein' 'im, yeah, but stickin' nails in me eyeballs seemed just as fuckin' enjoyable."

I rolled my eyes and went toward the wardrobe to find him another shirt when he called out, "Willa?"

I turned, looking at him expectantly.

He said, "Thank you, love."


vi

Lined along the barrels with tweed suits and lowered caps, the men from the city of Birmingham filled the basement in a hum of chatter and laughter, almost like schoolboys. I settled behind Alfie and leaned against the cabinet with a clipboard balanced on my hip, ticking off names for him while he threw out documents. On our left, Ollie tossed out aprons that I had made over the last few months, the pile dwindling with every man who stepped through our doors.

Another man marched into the office, tall and proud by the straightening of his shoulders in front of us, his eyes drinking in Ollie first, flashing toward me with a brief nod, and then settling on Alfie with a fiery sort of determination in himself.

"Name," Alfie drawled.

"Billy Kitchen."

"Occupation?"

"Head baker," he stated.

I felt the crackle of tension which followed and lowered my eyes to look at Alfie, even if his expression was obscured from my position behind him. He simply pressed out the folds of the documents that Kitchen would have to fill out and threw it toward him, telling him to do exactly that, but his eyes followed the large man as he took the apron that Ollie handed him. He watched him all the way out and muttered, "Tommy Shelby, mate. Never give power to the big man, what did I tell you, Ol, hm? Willa, I warned you 'bout these blokes, didn't I?"

I saw the silhouette of Billy Kitchen behind the frosted windowpanes of the office and saw the defiance in his shoulders still held proud and tall and I wondered if Alfie really had been right about them.


vii

Afterward, I sat alone in that office with my legs thrown up on the table, leaned backward in the chair with my hands rested against my stomach, staring blankly into the orange glow of the lamps so that the colour blinded my vision, blurred it outward into softer smudges. I could hear the thumping of boots scuffed against the dirt floors down the hall which led out into the courtyard through great wooden doors, heard the shouts of one man, the men gathered in front of him like soldiers.

I never heard what was said, but I knew that it was probably much along the lines of what Alfie had described that morning; avoid Jewish women and pretend to be bakers, which was what he told all men in that basement.

Soon, Alfie appeared in the doorway with our coats in his hands. "Finished, Willa. Get your coat on, I'm bringin' you and Ollie to that nice place what opened up in Charter'ouse last week."

I stared at him. "Really?"

"Really."

"For what reason?"

"Well, Franny popped out the ol' sprog and I suppose she's a little busy, ain't she, can't 'ave our Ollie wastin' away to nothin' while she's in the 'ospital."

I narrowed my eyes, wary. "Right. Or you just want to treat him because you care about the lad."

"Hm? Sorry, love," he said, "couldn't 'ear you properly, eardrum is all blocked up, innit? Right, well, like I said, I'm takin' Ollie with me, so if you wanna come – or you can go 'ome and 'ope that Cyril left you some toast, yeah?"

Pushing myself out of my chair, I snorted at him and took my coat. "You can deny it all you like. You care about Ollie."

"Still can't 'ear you, darlin' – must get to a doctor 'bout me ears, eh, only seem to go funny when you start talkin' rubbish to me, don't they"

He walked ahead of me, shrugging on his coat, Cyril slinking from his bed to chase after him. I locked the office behind me, but in the dim light left from the hall outside, I saw his cane settled by the table. I almost called out to him that he had forgotten it, although he sometimes only carried it for the sake of it. I almost did it until I caught a wet sheen at the bottom of the cane and realised that blood coated the wood, glinting dully in the faint light which filled the hall and poured into the office in glimmering sheets of silver.

"You comin', Willa?" Alfie called out.

"Yeah," I answered absently, looking away from that cane. "I'm coming."


viii

Parting like the red sea at the sight of Alfie, the crowd at The Diamond was composed of rich socialites and drunken lovers entangled at the entrance. Ollie trailed behind us, a little uncertain in himself because Alfie had simply told him that he was eating with us and had left Ollie with little opportunity to do more than sink into the backseat of the car with us, blinking around himself in bewilderment. Franny was still in the hospital and Ollie had tried to stay with her and the baby as much as possible, but even he could not deny Alfie when he was in a certain mood.

In the heart of the restaurant, he looked all the more adrift, floating between the bodies all around him, his dark mop of hair cast in shimmering gold from the chandeliers overhead. It had all those gaudy markings, too, all golden trimmings and marble horses around the edges with lavish curtains draped in front of the private rooms. I heard that old drumming and snapping from the musicians and thought of Tommy, sat in a restaurant much like The Diamond, a cigarette placed between his lips and sickly-blackness in his eyes.

Alfie pulled my chair out for me, let me settle against it before he helped me shuffle it toward the table. He passed my black coat over to the waiter who hovered nearby, then took off his own. Slowly, Ollie dropped into the chair on my left and looked around himself again, blinking like a lost puppy in search of its mother. Alfie, on the other hand, took the seat on my right and clapped his hands together.

"The birth of a son," he announced, "is a brilliant fuckin' thing, Ollie. Your legacy, your namesake – you ain't picked a name out for 'im yet, 'ave ya?"

Ollie drew his eyes from the sparkling sheets of diamonds behind the musicians and croaked, "Uh, um – well, I thought Oliver Junior was nice."

"Oliver Junior," Alfie repeated flatly, his smile dropping. "Oliver fuckin' – nine months that sprog 'as been in Franny and you came up with Oliver fuckin' Junior? When did that bright idea pop into your skull, Ol, the minute the little lad breathed 'is first gulp? You ain't thought o' nothin' else, mate?"

Ollie swallowed. "Elijah."

"Elijah," I mused. "I like that."

"So does Franny."

"Yeah, well, she pushed 'im out, so she gets the say, don't she?" Alfie shrugged. "I like it, anyway."

Ollie blinked rapidly, seeming dazed. "You do?"

"Strong name, innit? Elijah. Miracle worker, weren't 'e, in the 'oly Book? The boy would want to be, given 'e got 'alf your fuckin' blood in 'im. Needs all the miracles 'e can get, don't 'e?" Alfie replied, but his lips were held in a grin and his eyes sparkled with humour.

Ollie relaxed, nodding. "Elijah. It does sound nice."

"Aye," Alfie agreed, "much better than Oliver fuckin' Junior. Franny would be puttin' 'im right back in there until you thought o' somethin' better –…"

"Alfie," I scolded, although my laughter cut through the harsh tone that I intended to hold.

"Right. Time for grub, innit?" he said, summoning a waiter with his hand.


ix

All the while, a candle flickered between the three of us and cast the men in a delicate glow of yellow and orange blending together with each twirl of the flame. Alfie kept us laughing and, in one moment, I noted that Ollie was much more at ease than before, sipping at water and occasionally choking if Alfie said anything particularly rude or blunt. I realised that Alfie had really tried to make the lad laugh throughout the starters, although it was never very hard for him to do it. He had tried to help Ollie settle in this place where he had never been before, where he felt he was out of place and exposed without Franny. Alfie did that for him.

Underneath the table, I reached to find his hands and squeezed them, smiling at him.

He assumed that it was for another joke he had made, but it came from that warmth which swirled in my chest for him, even in the blueness. I stood from the table and excused myself before I turned to find the bathroom, smiling at the sound of laughter from Ollie.

Jostled between foreign shoulders, I felt the same crushing sense of being completely surrounded that Ollie had felt, but it hardly bothered me because I had spent a lot of time sneaking between crowds as a child, stealing purses and necklaces and bracelets while I did it. It had been easier in a crowd, because if the person felt a bump or a jolt, they often dismissed it because of the sheer number of people around them. Even if they did look behind themselves, they rarely thought to look down for a child disappearing into the folds, darting off to alleyways and tenements.

Slipping into the bathrooms, I glanced around at all the sweeping statues of marbled women with arms held in feminine poses. I took a stall, having waited behind a long line of women. I pulled down my skirts and found blood in my knickers. I stared at it as if I had never seen blood there before, never had a period nor felt my innards scrunch tight from the pain of it. It made my heart drop, somehow.

I saw all that red right then and there; the blueness just came after.


x

Finishing quickly, I passed the women who lined the mirrors, retouching powder and painting pouted lips in scarlet. I had to shuffle around them to reach the hall. I turned, momentarily confused in which direction I had come from. I was stood in a hall which split into three directions; the first went toward the bathrooms, another toward the cloakroom, and the last toward the entrance whose doors were held open, letting a crisp breeze from the street billow into this hall and swirl around the people stood in its length. I turned and bumped against a gentleman who sloshed his drink on himself.

I thought of Arthur. I thought of a cheek slit open by a knife, tongue poking through its horrid redness; you watchin' me like I'm some fuckin' freak, eh –…

"I am so sorry," I apologised, looking around for a napkin when I suddenly glanced up at the man and fell totally still.

His hands had been gloved in leather, much like that first day that I had met him, his coat pulled around him as if he had just been about to leave the restaurant. His shirt was tucked in, this time, tucked despite a bulging gut that pressed against it, for he had gotten older, much older. His hair was white and sparse, thinly spread against his scalp. His eyes were rimmed in watery redness, his skin speckled in liver-spots.

He had gotten older.

And yet still his eyes looked through me.

"Quite all right," he said.

The last time that I had heard him speak, he had called me kitten. It had been etched into my skin by his poisonous lips and it had been there from that moment onward, with the cold air of night lashing at it like an open wound that had long since been infected. I felt, suddenly, as if I was a young girl stood in stockings and a little bonnet all neatly pressed, reaching for blackberries and finding him there behind me, hands pulling at me, tugging at me, forcing me into a corner and holding me there.

Because it was William Yaxley stood before me.

"Don't you remember me?"

He fixed the cuffs of his coat and glanced around himself. Seeming thoroughly disinterested, he paused only to ask, "I beg your pardon?"

I turned back toward the bathrooms and passed the women who stood there waiting for their turn, went right around them and took a stall. I heard them grumble and curse at me, smacking at the wooden frame, but the noise softened into a faint rattle because that tinny whistle bloomed in my eardrums. I cracked my knees against the tiled floor, gripped the marbled seat and spewed into the toilet, spewed out sickly-blackness until I collapsed in weakness, choking on the heavy blackness left in my mouth. I fell against the wall behind me, banged my skull against it.

I banged it again, harder and harder until I blinked in flashes of white and swirls of black.

I was crying, I realised. I was crying so much that it stuffed my nostrils and stained my cheeks in dark patches of red, sore and tender to the touch from scrubbing them with the cuffs of my blouse. I heard another rush of thumping against the door, those women still cursing at me, cursing over and over until finally I hauled myself onto unsteady feet and pulled it open.

I saw the blur of faces around me, the confusion and realisation blended together.

"Are you all right, Mrs Solomons?"

I swallowed bile and nodded. I went toward the mirror, aware of the women who watched from behind me with eyes wide. I held out a hand and rasped, "Powder, please."

Shuffling through her purse, the woman alongside me found her own case and handed it over without another word. I assumed that it was a blend of worry at my fraught appearance and the fact that they had called me by Solomons, that surname which floated always in my peripheral, never fully mine.

I thanked the woman, but found my hands trembled too badly to press the powder against my skin. I looked around myself in confusion, not quite sure what I was meant to do, trembling so much that the woman simply took back her powder and I thought that that was the end of it. But she touched my shoulders and drew back at my flinch, uncertain, before she slowly took the brush and stroked the powder along my cheeks with it, around my nose and down toward my throat where reddened patches flourished.

She had soft blonde hair left in loose curls, bopping against her shoulders. She was pretty in the way that I imagined an angel was pretty, all delicate features and lips pulled into some perpetual serenity. She found red lipstick in her purse and dabbed it against her fingertip to darken my lips, her own mouth held open as she focused. She pulled back to admire her handiwork.

"There," she murmured kindly, "you look much better, Mrs Solomons. Would you like to come outside with me? I can find Mr Solomons if you like or find you a cab. Which do you prefer?"

"I'm all right," I told her. I cleared my throat, ridding myself of that horrid croakiness. "Really. Thank you. What's your name?"

"Daisy," she answered. "Daisy Rothman."

"Daisy," I repeated. "Daisy Rothman."

She watched me with her green eyes, intelligent and knowing. "If you ever need to talk, Mrs Solomons, I work in a café on Milton Avenue. Your husband might know my father, Michael Rothman."

I heard her words, but I was swimming in blueness. I was swimming in it so much that I only nodded and slipped around her. I swam toward those tables and saw Alfie still sat there with Ollie. It felt as if we had been apart for an eternity until I sat in my seat and realised that it had not been that long at all, because Alfie only glanced at me with a smile and Ollie was telling this story about the baby throwing up on his shoulder for the first time and it felt too much, then, to sit and listen and know that the whole time we had been here, William Yaxley had been there right along with us.

But he was always there, always had been, ever since I was just a girl in stockings and a bonnet, stood in that pantry –…

"Alfie," I said. I heard that shaky attempt to remain smooth and calm. "I'm not feeling well. I think I might ask Caleb to take me home. You should stay with Ollie."

Alfie leaned toward me. "You ain't feelin' good? What, was it the food 'ere? I'll talk to that fuckin' manager –…"

I grabbed his arm to hold him in his seat, shaking my head. "No, Alf – I just – have woman problems, y'know."

Alfie often suffered the same response that came from many men once informed of these mystifying and other-worldly woman problems. He looked at me blankly, then glanced down as if he could somehow see through the fabric of my skirts, and mumbled sheepishly, "Oh, right. Well, we can finish 'ere."

"You haven't even had the main course, Alf. Go ahead. I just want to go home and run myself a bath, all right?"

He looked conflicted. I was cruel enough to touch his cheeks and peck my lips against his, patting his arm with my other hand. Ollie stood from his seat and I hugged him tightly. Alfie was still looking as if he might follow after me, his eyebrows drawn tight, scrunching his lips together. I hugged him, too, felt his arms wrap around me, cut out all that music thumping behind him, from the musicians on that stage; different world now, Willa, but it seems like there was always some kind of drumming and snapping in it.


xi

Caleb was half-asleep in the car, his pale face slumped against the window with his lips pasted against it, fogging the glass with his breath. I tapped at the window, but he hardly stirred at all. I slapped my palm at it, and he jolted, banging his forehead against it. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes, looking around himself and then blanching in surprise when he saw me outside the car, shivering in my coat. He tried to claw at his door, but I had already opened the passenger side, which shocked him even more because I always sat in the backseat.

"Mrs Solomons, I am so sorry, I only nodded off for a minute –…"

"Could you call me Willa, please, Caleb?" I asked him. "And you can sleep as much as you like when the engine isn't on, you know."

He looked even paler. "A-All right, Mrs – Willa. Is Mr Solomons joining us?"

"No."

"Oh – Ivor Square, then?"

"No," I muttered tiredly, brushing hair from my forehead. "Not yet."


xii

In the office, I found three bottles of rum and the keys to a flat that had long since been forgotten by him, but that he still paid for it every month because it meant so much to him. I glanced at that cane still slumped against the table, the blood dried and crusted now. I shifted aside some papers and saw the glint of a pistol in his drawer. I slammed it shut, my hands trembling again. I left the office before I could think too much about what I could have done with it in that hall with Yaxley stood in front of me – what I would have done.

What I had wanted so badly to have done.


xiii

Climbing the creaking staircase, I heard the shrieking echoes of children rushing between the flats and the scolding of mothers with babies held on cocked hips stood in the doorways. I trudged by them all, around and around the staircases until I found the fifth floor. I looked out at the fog of smoke which breathed across the tenements from the factories nearby and inhaled that heaviness into my chest, let it curl around the stones that had settled there. I glanced at the old flat, the fourth one down, its door sprung open by a little girl who ran out with her brother chasing behind her. She never looked at me, but I saw the hall behind her.

I had seen sickly-sweet blackness there, once.

I went further toward the sixth flat at the end of the row and jabbed the key into its worn lock, cracking open the door and finding myself in a cloud of dust. I stepped into the flat and locked the door behind me for good measure. I kicked off my boots and let them clatter against the floorboards of the hall before I took off my coat and scarf, too. I dragged myself toward the bathroom of the flat which had not been used in years, its bathtub layered in white dust and spiders in its corners. I plopped myself on the edge of it and pulled that rum from my purse, squinting at its label.

I had never had alcohol before, never even tasted it. I had looked at Arthur and thought that I could never want it, but I figured that Arthur had suffered through his own kind of Yaxley in his life and rum made it wash down a little better – better than the snow had ever done, anyway.

I lay backward into the bathtub and felt the dust sink into the fabric of my blouse and skirt, settle into me. I took the first taste, swirled it around my mouth and swallowed; it was sweeter than I had expected, sweet like the tea that Alfie had made for me that morning, but there was a deeper spice laid beneath it. It stung my throat to drink it, so I drank it all the more, until I forgot to take little sips and took great big gulps of it instead, letting my eyeballs water and my chest ache for breath; the art of nursing a babe.

I thought of Alfie.

Always, I thought of Alfie.

In my fuzzy dreamlike state, I imagined it there like the pictures, splashed against the cracked tiles of the bathroom that had once belonged to Alfie and his family. I had warned Caleb what to do if Alfie accosted him. I knew that Caleb would tell him that I was not at the house and perhaps he might spin that tired story I had made up in which I would say that I was with Ada – but I knew that Alfie was much too clever, he spotted fibs like that or he had probably had people following behind, more spies in a crowd of people who watched me anyway, watched that elusive Mrs Solomons stumble from bathrooms.

I had finished the first bottle, but it had not knocked me out like I had anticipated. I was made of fluff and faded warmth, but I could still clamber from the bathtub. I tripped and tumbled only once when bending for my boots. I wanted Ada. I wanted it to be the truth that I was with. I wanted to tell her about Charlotte, all of a sudden, and tried to find the keys in the pile of clothes left scattered around. I had taken off my blouse, I realised, unbuttoned it. I felt too hot and scrambled to fix the buttons while I looked for the keys. I found them at the bottom of the bag, between the other bottles clinking together.

There was a telephone box only a block from the tenements and it felt more like ten blocks from how I slunk along the stairs like a shattered doll, my limbs all bent out of shape, my eyes squinting through bleary tiredness to find it. It had gotten darker out, much darker.

And he had gotten so much older. And he had never even looked at me.

I found the telephone, fell into that box like I had fallen out of the bathtub, until all the world seemed to turn with me, and I had to grip at its walls to hold myself up. I pulled it against my ear and dialled for her, mumbled her address. I heard the little buzzes and chimes and hummed along with them, some song that I had made for myself, until there came a sudden click and a sharp inhale of breath.

"Tommy?"

"No," I mumbled. "No, not Tommy."

There came a drawn-out pause. "Willa? Is that you?"

"It's me," I slurred out. "Can you see me?"

"What?"

"Can you come and see me, Ada?" I asked.

"Well, where are you?" she replied. "Are you drunk?"

"Just tired," I told her. "Can you come and see me?"

Another pause followed the shuffle of clothing and a deeper sigh. "All right, Willa. Where are you?"


xiv

I went back into the bathtub but left the door unlocked for her. I had cried again, somewhere along the line, cried like a child – only I had never really cried as a child, not that much. I never even cried when Esther thumped my skull against the counter-top in the old flat. Perhaps that was what had jumbled my brain around and made it the way that it was, switched all colour from weakened splashes of pinks and oranges and yellows into muted blue. I saw what Alfie had always seen. I blinked very slowly, feeling as if my eyelashes had been stuck together with honey, too hard to pull apart.

I had found blood in my knickers and not once had Alfie ever asked if there was a reason that I had never fallen pregnant, after all those times together. I had never asked until I held Elijah. I had never wanted to ask it. It felt childish and immature to want something only after holding it, in the way that a child envied another child for a doll that they did not possess. I blinked through honey and dipped my head backward, feeling a heavy bump there from when I had bashed it against the wall in the bathroom of The Diamond.

"Was your wife with you then?" I asked aloud. "In that restaurant? Did she know about it?"

The flat answered in echoes of dust.

"Did she know what you did? Does she know what you still do? I bet you do it," I continued. "And if Mary had not come in then – if you had only –…"

Maybe I never wanted children. I knew that I understood what Alfie had said, that our life was not for them. But John had plenty of them and I was certain that Esme would soon push out more of them. How could he have so many, when my arms raised for – and Yaxley had not recognised me, anyway. Would it have been any better if he had?

My eyelids twitched, my mouth was slack. I drooled like Cyril and wiped it away with a limp hand.

"Do you think he knew me, Charlotte?" I whispered. "I don't think he did. I don't think it mattered one bit who I was – who I am, now."

I thought that she could hear me from the flat on this row, just two jumps from this one. I tried to lift myself from the bathtub to find her but fell against it. I felt weighed down, consumed. I blinked through honey.

"Alfie never talks about it," I said. "And I really miss you, Charlotte."