A/N: thank you for all the feedback! the asterisk* mentioned in this story refers to the story of bridget cleary if you want to look into it. anyway i hope you all enjoy (please let me know if you do, it means a lot!) :)


twenty-seven


TWO YEARS LATER


Curling wisps of fog licked the bristling strands of grass in the black fields, droplets of dew sticking onto our boots, soles sunken into the mud. There was a great black stallion just ahead of us, nuzzling the earth, flicking its tail back and forth against a swam of fat flies that crawled onto its hind-legs in quick, darting bites. The river rattled somewhere behind us, cracking against dislodged rocks. The clouds brewed black and purple from storms held behind them.

Tommy had the other horses brought in, but the black horse still grazed. He never liked to lock it away, he told me, trapped in a stable where it could only chew on hay and look at the world through a narrow slit in his stall. Charlie held my hand, his small boots catching on the bumpy ground beneath us. I had visited him and Tommy enough that he recognised me now, ran toward me if I pulled into the driveway and liked to sit in my lap like Elijah did.

In the house, just before we had set off for his walk, Tommy had taken a call in his office and I had taken Charlie into the hall to button his coat. I had made it a little game with him, starting at the lowest button, fixing them all the way up until I could bop his little nose and he would giggle in delight, his cheeks stained in red from the fresh, crisp air that rolled from the hills.

One of the maids had watched us, her hands latched around his cap and gloves. She said, "It is good for him to have you around, Mrs Solomons. He needs a woman's touch, in this house, without his – well, without –…"

Her eyes had lifted toward the portrait alongside us, which showed Grace in an armchair; poised, delicate.

Walking through the fields with Tommy and his son, I figured it was not just a woman's touch that had been needed, but any touch at all. The house was silent, eerily so. Each footstep echoed, each door opened yawned outward into the emptiness of it all.

Often, I stayed late enough that I was offered dinner with his family – and I took it only because I was afraid that Tommy might not eat at all if he was not forced to entertain, even if it was just us three together in a looming, seemingly unending stretch of wooden panelling and flush portraits all around his dining-room. Lately, I had not felt very hungry at all. I had been nauseated by the lush, expensive foods that Tommy had in his house.

And I knew the reason for it.

There was a loneliness to be heard in the shuffling of maids' shoes against the polished floors, the clinking of the cutlery with each bite taken, even in the unfolding of napkins. Thomas spoke quietly, wary to disturb the dust, while Charlie babbled in short bursts, kicking his small feet back and forth beneath the table. It was this painful loneliness that had made me so ill, so pale and trembling.

Thomas had been lonely in a lot of ways, all his life. But now it could be heard even more than it could be seen.

I feared a loneliness like that. I held Alfie even closer after I spent time with Thomas, even if I still dreamt of hallways filled with countless portraits of faces prim and stern in the first handful, then smeared and smudged in those that followed.

Eventually, I came toward the end of that hall in my dreams and looked at another face made unfamiliar from the slashes in its chest and the scars around its mouth held in perfect stillness; until I saw her black curls, tangled and wild around her, saw eyes blacker than the bogs in winter, saw stolen jewellery draped around her wrists and a wedding-ring upon her finger, the only thing that was hers, and against her chest, she held a letter with great care, its letters written in a language that she could not speak.

In the field, Thomas smoked a cigarette and fixed the scarf I had made him around his neck. I had made him that scarf for his birthday, which had been celebrated only with a small spot of tea in London, with Charlie messily spooning melting chocolate into his mouth. It had been sombre. I had made Tom some handmade gifts like those scarves for himself and Charlie, a matching pair, and other gifts had been more appropriate for the business that still ran between him and Alfie, like a hefty envelope and cufflinks and things that I found a lot more dull.

In the card that I had written for him, I had pressed a daisy for those childhood days long since gone from us. He had taken it out and turned it around in the dull light overhead. Out of the blue, while still looking at that daisy, he said, "I am glad that you sent me that telegram, Willa, all those years ago."

It had been so unlike him that I had been unsure how to respond, though it seemed that he had not expected an answer. He had only placed the daisy back in his card and draped the scarf round his neck, before he had asked if I would like to walk with him and Charlie around the shops. Tommy did not often bring Charlie into London and he was much more comfortable when the boy was in their home, out in the countryside where the blackened roots of this business could not easily reach him.

But Charlie liked figurines of horses and trains, liked to collect them and play with them in his bedroom. Tommy, for all his blueness, could never quite bring himself to deny Charlie the chance to drift between the aisles of those stores that sold such toys while we wandered behind him, amazed that a boy could be so taken by carved carts attached to little horses.

Walking alongside him there in the field, with our gloved hands stuffed into pockets from the cold, he told me about a dream that he had had the night beforehand, though he had seen it fleetingly. He said, "I was in a house that I did not recognise. But I walked through it as if I did, because I knew every turn to take. I found you there, in one room. You did not speak to me, for it was as if you had not noticed anybody behind you. You were looking out the only window there in that room. There were sycamore trees in front of you, moving back and forth, back and forth."

The black horse raised its head and looked at us through the fog, flicking its tail.

ii

Night had fallen quickly, black and speckled in faint, glimmering stars. The house was smouldering dot of orange. I walked with Thomas through the dirt-paths that ran back toward his home. I had lifted Charlie, held him in my arms although he was heavier than he had been only a few months before. I had shaken off any attempt from Tommy to take him, though his eyes had noticed my wince when I lifted the boy. I was not terribly strong in my arms, but I suffered very little pain in my spine in the same way that Alfie did. It was more that I did not feel very good. There was a faintness in me, a weakness in my arms.

"It would be a long drive back to London tonight, Willa," Tommy said. "Would you not rather stay the night and return before Boxing Day?"

I had never slept in his house. I had stayed until the first tick after midnight, but that was usually it. Still, I looked at his tall, slender form in the darkness, pale and ghostly and I imagined him wandering his own halls, peering into his own face with the same scrunched, confused lack of recognition that haunted my own dreams, and I felt a familiar roll of pity for Tommy.

I had heard about his fallout with the Shelby family through Johnny and I had been furious with Tommy for involving Johnny at all in the arrests, but standing with him in the house, I saw that he would rather a noose had been put around his own neck than the necks of all his family. He never had the words to tell them that.

Pride stuffed his mouth, left him mute and stupid. He tasted its bitter stain with every swallow.

"I can call Alfie," I replied.

Tommy nodded. In his own way, he seemed relieved that he would not suffer the sound of his loneliness for one night. I wondered if that was why he had started to take longer trips into London than he ever had before, though I was certain he would never admit it. I had not talked too much about it with Alfie.

Surprisingly, Alfie had not asked, either.

If I ever received a call from Thomas to tell me that he was in town, a small hint from him that he would appreciate a drink or perhaps a small chat, then I would simply take my coat and tell Alfie that he had called. It was simple and brisk.

Only once had Alfie glanced up from the paperwork on his desk and said, "You buy Tom a drink on me, yeah, sweet'eart?"

"Very kind of you, Alf." I had meant it, too.

He had taken off his glasses and set them alongside him. Then, he said, "If I 'ad lost me wife and all me friends, all me family, with only me boy and me maids and me 'orses for company, I would consider a drink was a better gift than most might think it to be, love."

In the house, I sat in his chair and felt swamped by its size, holding the telephone against my ear while Charlie played with another wooden figurine of a black horse much like we had seen out in the fields. He made it gallop along my collarbone and around my throat, pausing to whinny at my jawline and rush around my hair, but I had become distracted, worried my call was left unanswered at the house. I dialled twice more, then finally called the bakery three times. Charlie shifted, his small boot pressing into my stomach. It hurt, and I tried to move him all while listening for Alfie.

But there was nothing until the final call, when there came a soft click and a mumble from the other side, before I heard his gruff voice and it warmed me, made me smile even if he had not properly spoken apart from a blunt ''ello'.

I told him that Tom had asked me to stay and I heard his hesitation for just a moment. "D'you want to?"

I rolled my eyes and smiled when Charlie placed the horse against my lips. I pretended to bite at it, and the boy giggled, his little fingers reaching to press against my cheek. "Yes, I do."

"Is that Tom's lad with ya?"

"No, that's Tom giggling," I replied, smirking. I bounced Charlie and grinned when he burst into more giggles, his hands scrunching my blouse to balance himself. "He giggles more than you would think, Tom does."

"I'll bet 'e does," Alfie said drily. I heard rustling behind him, murmured voices.

"Who's that, Alf?"

He hesitated and a niggling worry bloomed in my stomach. It made my limbs feel heavy and it was hard to hold Charlie, whose bony elbow dug into my breast when he turned and hurt more than I wanted to let on to the poor boy. So, I was more than grateful when he slipped from my lap, summoned by Frances to wash his hands before dinner. She was one of the maids, and she reminded me of Mary, a maid I had once known in a place called Rosewood Manor, who had taught me that women were attuned to the ways of men.

I felt it then, when I spoke to Alfie. It was what had made me feel that worry, because I knew that there was something swirling in him.

"Ollie," he said finally. "Ollie's 'ere with me. We been workin' late tonight. Might stay on a while, if I know you ain't comin' 'ome."

Again, he hesitated.

"You won't be doin' this often though, eh? Stayin' out there?"

The faint undercurrent of jealousy that rippled in his tone reminded me of that black and silky river we had seen during our walk. I was with a cousin, so that did not worry Alfie. He was more worried that I would be with Tommy so much that I might forget about him, in a childish sort of way. I had spent quite a bit of time with Tom in the last few months, especially once his family had been released and he had not heard a word. He had expected it, he said. He had anticipated it.

And still I imagined that it had hurt him more that he had known that it would happen than if it had taken him by surprise.

"Do you want me to come home now, Alfie?"

It balanced between us, that question. I was being truthful that if he really wanted it, I would make some feeble excuse to Tommy. I would be in London within the hour. But I had also asked it because I could feel that he had been unprepared for this call.

Suddenly, the jealousy was all mine. I worried that it was not Ollie with him, that it was someone else – maybe a woman. It felt foolish and impulsive to think it, without any reason behind it other than the strangeness in his tone and the rustling and the feeling that if Ollie was in the bakery, he was not the only other person there, but Alfie would not name them – not name her, if it truly was a woman.

Or could it have been another war? Perhaps he had found himself another opponent, some man who went not by Sabini nor Murphy but another name that would haunt us, weigh us down.

The door of the office creaked, and I saw Tom, nodding to tell me without words that the maids had brought us dinner. I heard scuffing shoes and clinking cutlery already. I felt it had been a mistake to stay. It was as if the house had morphed into that house in Tom's dream. I knew each turn. I was in a room, looking at myself like there was another version of me, but she never looked at me. She was distracted by the singing of sycamore trees someplace far from me, so far that I could not hear what she heard.

"No," Alfie said. "You stay, Willa. I'll be 'round in the mornin'."

"You don't need to come out here."

"I'll be there," he said.

There was another silence. I sliced it open with my words and let it bleed when I spoke, for I said, "It's been two years, you know."

Before he hung up, there was that rustling again. He said, "I know."

iii

The fireplace in Tommy's office was large, like most things in his house. The fire crackled and spat. He sat in his armchair, toting a whiskey against his lips, his eyes distant and shiny with that same fog from the fields. I sat across from him, comfortable with the lack of conversation between us for once. Charlie had been shuffled off to bed despite his protests, attempting to clamber onto the sofa with me.

Tommy had watched silently while the maids had taken his son off to another hall and another bedroom and another bed among all the others. I had decided that I never wanted a mansion like this; it reminded him of the cost of his power with every golden knob and marble tile.

Tom spoke first, which was unusual. He murmured, "Ada tried to speak with John and the others. Ask them 'round for Boxing Day."

"She always was the bravest of all the Shelby children."

He looked toward the windows, pursing his lips. "Charlie asked about his cousins yesterday."

"What did you tell him?"

He shrugged, rolling his whiskey in its glass before he took a sip. "That they live far out in the countryside and his uncle Arthur is busy with his chickens."

"And Charlie wanted to play with those chickens."

Tommy nodded, the faintest trace of a smile on his pale lips. "And Charlie wanted to play with those chickens," he repeated fondly.

I looked at the fire, warmed by its blistering heat. I thought of that phone call earlier, before dinner, when Alfie had sounded so strange. I had never worried much about women before. Alfie had never shown any interest in other women. He had never even flirted, really, because all his pet-names were said out of habit, laced with polite detachment.

Yet it was miserable how easily I spiralled into self-doubt.

"You're thinking about Alfie," Tommy noted. "Misses you, does he?"

"How could he not?" I joked weakly. I saw a stray toy left behind by Charlie. It was a horse, a beautiful little horse coloured mahogany and painted with coal eyes. I plucked it from the rug, twisting it around. "Are you glad you moved out here, Tom?"

He shrugged again. "Glad is not a word I often use, Willa. But I suppose I am – glad, that is. Quiet out here. Quiet enough that I can think."

"You're fibbing."

Tommy seemed a little surprised, though he masked it well. "Is that right?"

"That's right. You don't like to think at all," I said easily. "Not one man I have ever known who was in the war likes to think, Tom."

"Is that what Alfie says, eh?"

There was a funny thing that happened between us whenever he brought up Alfie. I was cautious, careful not to talk too much about him. I trusted Tom. But I was more protective of Alfie, preferring to avoid any topic that involved him if I could. Tom knew that, which was why he leaned back against his seat and scrubbed a hand over his jaw.

"Arthur," he said, "used to do anything he could to stop himself thinking and spent all his nights in a pub with as much whiskey as he could buy. John stopped the silence by marrying Esme. Never lets him think for too long, does Esme. Probably best. John tends to do some daft things after a spot of thinking."

There it was again, that fondness in his voice, quickly muffled by a mouthful of whiskey.

"You know, Tom, maybe it shouldn't be Ada doing the speaking. Maybe you should try it."

"Not sure they would want to hear it."

"Not sure that you would know unless you tried it," I retorted.

"The time for trying has long since passed," he said calmly. He stood, poking at the coals of the fire. "I watched it and recognised that it was passing me by – and I let it go, all the same. I allowed it to pass. Now, here we are."

Fiery embers fell by his feet.

"And I think we should sleep now, Willa."

iv

I went into the bedroom that had been made for me, prepared myself for sleep. Despite what he had said, I knew that he would not sleep.

v

The bedroom was inky, the curtains drawn and blocking out all moonlight. Like all other sound, the rattle of the telephone had been a shriek that consumed the house in its power, filling its blankness, swallowing all its space. I heard footsteps and murmurs and I wondered, for just a moment, if Alfie was dead. It had been like that for a while, ever since I had first conjured that misshapen creature in my mind, who represented Sabini and Jack Murphy and all other enemies who had tried to take Alfie from me.

Addled from sleep, I imagined that creature in the hall outside, lolloping toward me, whispering that soon my husband would be stolen from me, like those old fairy-tales told to me by cousins in our old wagons – of changelings and fairies who sat on the roadside for travelling families such as ourselves, to trick and deceive and steal.

"Willa," the creature said.

Letting out a yelp, I startled and scrambled from my pillows, for the creature had formed itself in those shadows at the bottom of my bed, pooling into a fine, tall figure that I soon realised was only Tommy. He smoked frantically. I breathed in fumes before he had even flicked on the light. He looked ghastly, pale and drawn out, as if the edges of his skin had been blurred outward.

And he was covered in blood.

"I need you to wake up," he said. "And I need you to put on your boots and coat. Then, you need to wake up Charlie and wrap him up in warm clothes. Meet me in the hall. I already called Alfie. He's meeting us on the way. But we need to leave now."

"Why? What happened?"

He blinked as if he had suddenly remembered something that had not occurred to him and reached behind to pull something from his waistband: it was a pistol, one that was quickly pressed into my shaky hands.

For all the times I had been through horrid, shifting changes with Alfie sparked by some gang-war, I still trembled any time that I was thrown into a whirlwind of fast, thumping movement. I fumbled with the pistol, looked at it and then said, "Tom, I have terrible aim –…"

Tommy bent low beside the bed, balancing on his haunches. "It doesn't matter if you have terrible aim, so long as you hit somewhere. Arm, leg, chest – so long as it keeps him down."

Who is he?

I stared at him, bewildered. "What happened, Tom?" I repeated softly.

His mouth twitched around words he could not bring himself to say. He settled on something else, which was spoken in a quiet, soothing tone that was meant to calm me. "Get your coat and your boots, yeah?"

Dumbly, I nodded. I fell from the bedsheets and he told me not to fix them, to leave them for Frances. I stumbled down the hall until I found Charlie, asleep on his stomach with one arm over the edge of his bed. Ever so gently, I took him into my arms. Again, I found it hard to balance him, my back hurting more than I expected, but shushed his mumbled words, stroking his hair.

"Where are we going?"

"It's a surprise, sweetheart."

"Where's Daddy?"

"He's waiting for us downstairs."

"Are we going for another walk?"

"A little like that."

vi

Somehow, I had found that his house disturbed me more at night than it did during the day. There was something harrowing in the sheer blackness of the garden, how its borders blended into those of the fields around him and it seemed that there was no end, out there, that it only stretched onward and onward into some pit from which we could never climb out, though we clawed at its edges all the same.

The hall was much too bright, much too wide. I wanted to be in my own bed with Alfie and I was glad to know that he was coming. I repeated it over and over. I thought that that was what it must be like, for spirits trapped in our world, to be forced to stand in one place and look out at blackness, always thinking that there was something better coming for them, only to turn and see even more blackness behind them.

But soon Tommy raced from another hall – another hall, identical to all the others.

He said, "Thank you, Willa."

I was not sure just what he was thanking me for, but I nodded and carried Charlie out to the car, still held in my arms. I glanced at Tommy and realised that he was holding a large shotgun just beneath the flap of his coat, so that his son might not see it, but Charlie had lolled his head against my neck, and I felt his soft, warm breaths. He had fallen asleep again.

When I settled in the front seat with him, he only shifted around to make himself more comfortable. I fixed my coat to wrap its edges around the boy and warm him in this chilly night, my own skin breaking out in goose-bumps from the cold.

"Someone wants to hurt you," I stated.

Tommy started the car and cast one glance at his son. Seeing that he was already dozing, he muttered, "Not just me."

vii

Normally, the journey from his house was quite pleasant. I had a chance to look out at the lush greenery of the countryside with small bungalows dotting the fields once we were far from his own sprawling acres, small meadows and flowers poking from all sides. But I was uneasy by nightfall, felt every gnarled bump and turn in the road as if we travelled along the bony fingers of a witch. Once more, I imagined changelings and cruel, snarling faces in the blackness around us, peering at us with cold, white eyes.

When I was just a girl, one cousin had told me of a woman who had been bewitched by the fairies, replaced by a changeling who had pretended to be her, had tried to fool her husband and all those around her*. I thought of that story then, while Tommy tapped his fingertips against the wheel and glanced at myself and Charlie every couple of seconds, as if he thought we might be stolen by those same fairies if he did not watch us closely enough.

There was a small crossroads ahead, with a telephone-box on one side. It was overgrown with moss and I was not sure that it worked, but Tom parked alongside it, pulling his car close into the thistles and weeds which crawled from the black, glistening shrubbery beside us.

We did not speak. In all the time that we sat there, we did not speak.

I looked at him in the silvery light from the moon behind him. You would do well to stay away from the Shelbys, Mitchell Lee had once said. 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 car ahead of us. Tommy's face was like that of a skeleton, hollowed and skinless – it was the pale-yellow light that flashed from the dirt-road ahead that made him look like that, for one brief moment. It had drawn around his sockets, pooled in the lines of his mouth and the shadows which lashed across him had taken away his nose for a few seconds, until it cleared, and he was himself again.

Eventually, I asked, "What have you done, Thomas?"

"I have been ambitious," he said.

The yellow lights returned, for the car ahead had turned a final winding corner and rolled to a halt before us, spitting gravel from its wheels. There was Alfie, by himself, throwing himself from the car with such vigour that I knew almost instantly that he wanted to beat Thomas, wanted to shoot him or butcher him and bury him in the fields beside us. I knew it, because Tommy braced himself, drew his shoulders up and palmed the shotgun still in his lap.

Hastily, I pushed at my door and clambered out with Charlie still in my arms.

"Alfie!" I called out. "Calm down, just –…"

"Did you know, eh?" he roared at Thomas. The lights from Thomas' own car made him look feral and mad, washing him in a harsh whiteness that bleached him. "Did you fuckin' know what that Italian fuck had sent ya when you asked 'er 'round? Weren't enough to lose your own wife and your family over the years – 'ad to get your own cousin killed too, eh? She was too fuckin' kind to ya – she only came out 'cause no one else will fuckin' look at you these days. Who can blame them? You took advantage of my fuckin' wife's kindness –…"

"Alfie!" I hissed. It drew his eyes toward me, his pupils blown wide, his chest heaving. "Not in front of the boy!"

Slowly, he looked down at Charlie in my arms and I realised that he had woken up, blinking sleepily at me. "Willa?" he mumbled. "Where's Daddy?"

"Right here, Charlie," I whispered softly. I turned back to the car and helped him clamber back inside, shuffling him toward Tommy who lifted his arm to let the boy curl against him. I held still for a moment, then said, "Keep him safe, Tom."

He nodded stiffly. "Goodnight, Willa."

Breathing heavily, Alfie watched as Tom pulled the car out, then drove off into the darkness, his lights only a faint smudge in the distance. Then, Alfie's eyes locked on mine, before he seemed to study me. He pulled off his coat and came toward me, wrapping it around me, bundling me in his warmth before he grabbed me and pulled me against him, frantically kissing my hair, my forehead, my cheeks.

"You're scaring me," I whispered. "You're scaring me, Alfie –…"

"I told you," he interrupted, "that I weren't ever gonna be proper friends with Tom if it weren't best for us, yeah?"

"Why won't you tell me what he's done?"

Alfie licked his lips. "You're shiverin', love. Come back in the car and I'll tell ya, all right?"

"Stop treating me like a child. Tell me now."

He drew in a sharp, frustrated breath. "Your Tom calls me tonight, yeah, in a fuckin' panic. 'e tells me that 'e got a letter a few days ago. Black 'and."

"What does that mean?" I asked once he paused.

"Means kill or be killed," he answered. "Means someone wants Tom dead. Italians, 'e tells me. Seems our old pal Sabini switched sides to 'elp 'is countrymen what come over from New York. What want Tom dead."

"What did he do to them?"

"It were my understandin' that Tom killed the father of the big mafioso, or whatever they call 'em there. Or one of the Shelby brothers did it. Don't matter none, considerin' the whole family got the same letter."

"Even Ada?"

"I don't fuckin' know, Willa. Just – just get in the car now, yeah? You're tremblin'."

He was right, though I had not realised how cold I truly was until he took my arm and I felt the contrast. I was grateful for his coat, its warmth and heaviness and security, grateful to be with him and no longer in that house. He rubbed his hands up and down my arms to warm me, helping me into the car. "

"Alfie," I whispered, teeth chattering. "I never want a mansion. I never want a house as big as Tom's."

"Oh, am I ever fuckin' grateful I married you, eh, Willa," he joked lightly, kissing my forehead again. "Only woman I ever met what tells 'er 'usband that she don't want a big 'ouse."

viii

Alfie ran me a bath, once we were back in our own house, and I had never been so thankful for him in all my life. He sat at the edge, folding out a towel for me. He was still angry, still hunched at the shoulders from it. There was a sharpness in everything he did, from finding a fresh nightgown to slippers to herding Cyril back to his bed after he had sufficiently lathered my cheek in sloppy licks that I considered to be his form of kisses. I sank into the hot water and let out a content sigh.

"Alfie," I mumbled, "we're all right. We're home. You can forget about Tommy, now."

"Tom put you in fuckin' danger," he replied, moving around the basket in our bathroom. "D'you realise what that could look like, eh? 'e gets the black fuckin' 'and from these Italians and not a few days later, my wife is seen at 'is 'ouse. To these Italians, that could look like a fuckin' alignment, Willa."

"We're cousins."

"All the more reason for the Italians to think you could 'ave been there to show Tom that 'e got support from the fuckin' Jews on this one," he snapped harshly. "And if Tom 'ad decided not to call me tonight, eh? If you 'ad stayed out there – the one fuckin' night you chose to stay out there – and those Italians had turned up – …"

He threw down a towel in his frustration, though it was not quite as impactful as it would have been if he had thrown a glass or shattered a mirror. Still, I saw how his wrath pooled in his arms and hardened, made him stiff and uncomfortable.

"If 'is boy 'ad not been in that car," he said, "I would 'ave fuckin' throttled 'im. I would 'ave 'auled Tom out o' that fuckin' car and bashed 'is skull against its door."

I looked down at the bathwater, unsettled. It was not that I was not touched that Alfie cared so much, but I never liked that sort of talk, never liked when he became so angry that it filled him so completely. He knew it, too. He turned and sighed again, approaching to balance on the edge of the bathtub, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

"I'm sorry, love."

"I understand why you're angry, Alf," I murmured. "I do. It was wrong of Tom – I think he knows it. I just don't think he's been thinking clearly these past few months. He's been so alone."

"Why is that your fuckin' problem, eh? Y'know, the first time you told me you would meet 'im, I thought it were kind o' ya. Second time, I thought you was just findin' kin what you never 'ad when you was a girl. But now, Willa, I think you were too fuckin' good to 'im. Tom don't do well with good people 'round 'im. 'e gets 'em killed. Goodness can't be 'round 'im. It only reminds 'im o' what 'e ain't ever been."

"That isn't true," I mumbled. "He has a good heart. He's made mistakes, Alfie, what man hasn't?"

"It says somethin' if a man's own family don't want nothin' to do with 'im. Says a lot more when they get killed because o' that same man."

I was tired, worn and still afflicted by that unnerving feeling from being in Tommy's house. I stood from the bathtub and he helped me out, taking a towel and wrapping me in it. I think Alfie knew that I was not quite myself, because he led me into the bedroom and dressed me for bed and brought me into the bedsheets too, for my body had become limp and still dense. I could not think of anything but those fields and the gushing river and the faint sound of the maids' shoes in the hall.

"Thank you for coming to get me, Alfie."

"Always, darlin'. I missed ya, y'know. Weren't the same with just me and Cyril lookin' at each other. I reckon 'e missed you just as much."

I smiled, snuggling against him when he turned off the lamp and nestled back into the blankets.

"I meant what I said, about his house," I whispered. "There is something about all that space with nothing there to fill it. It must drive him mad."

"Tom ain't been right for a long time," Alfie replied tightly. "Weren't the 'ouse what did it to 'im, neither."

ix

In the morning, I felt much better. I had been away from those cold, looming walls and portraits, away from those fields and eyes that lay there between the branches of the trees. I felt almost guilty for the relief that it brought me. I decided never again to stay in his house for a night. I would make excuses for it, leave before night could take me. I heard the telephone sing its tune from the hall and padded out of the kitchen to answer, with Cyril following closely behind. He often walked around the house with me in the mornings, though he was otherwise preoccupied with staying firmly in his bed.

It was Ada who spoke on the other end and I had that odd, rolling coldness along my spine when I heard her, because her tone was a faint rasp which crackled over the line. She spoke in curt sentences. Then she let out this tired sigh that seemed to reach me even through all that space between us, as if I felt it like I had felt Charlie breathe against my skin. And then she said, "Look for that blue door, Willa. Never stop yourself from looking, eh?"

"I'll come to Birmingham," I told her. "I'll be there."

The line fizzled out and I stood there for another little while with the telephone still pressed against my ear. I released it slowly, peeling it from my clammy skin. I had an awful prickling knowing on the nape of my neck.

From the top of the stairs, Alfie called out, "Who was it, Willa?"

"Ada Shelby," I answered distantly. "She said John Shelby is dead. Shot in front of his own house, Michael Gray, too. But John was shot in front of his own house, with his wife – and Ada said the children had seen it – through the windows, they saw their own father –…"

I saw Esme, in my mind. I saw a child-like Esme, for I had not seen her in years, and she was still just a girl with dirt on her knees and palms from scrapping in the mud with her brothers – crouched over her husband, like she crouched over him now in a morgue in Birmingham. I heard Alfie's boots thump against the wooden stairs and felt his arms wrap around me to hold me against him, because I had started to cry, and I was not even aware of it.

"I said I would go there, Alfie."

"No."

"I have to. Ada needs me as much as –…"

"Willa, it looks like we're takin' sides."

"No," I mumbled. "No, I just – I want to see them, Alfie. Pay my respects. I'll only go to the house, I won't stay any longer. Johnny will surely be there – and –…"

"All right," he said. "Breathe in, Willa. That's it – slowly, come on, darlin' –…"

x

He took me back to the bedroom. I settled on the bed, staring blankly ahead. Though it may not have made sense to Alfie, who believed little in signs and feelings and things held in soil, I knew that the house itself had tried to warn me. It had been spoken in its creaking floorboards and whispered through its empty halls. It had screamed the loudest when it was in the fields, croaked from the frogs' bellies and laughed out in the caws of the crows who had been there during our walk, when Charlie had held my hand, and the river had ran behind us.

But there was more than had been said, in that house, that I had not yet understood. It had tried to tell me, but Tom had taken us from it too soon. It was still out there, alone, with only the maids to hear it. But I knew that there had been more.

xi

Small Heath was small; a cluster of narrow houses clumped together, their black roofs slick and weeping from the rain, sputtering down from the rusted piping and plopping against my black hat. I had changed my boots for once. It was a sudden, odd belief of mine that to wear my own pair, my beloved and battered pair that I always wore, while in the house of the Shelbys, would taint any other ground that I walked on – especially our own house. I wore a black dress, too, made of lace. I shook hands with kin I had not seen in many years, until I saw Esme in the hall of the Shelby house. She was pale and ghostly. We still looked alike, and when we stepped forward at the same time, unintentionally, I shivered.

"Chey," she whispered hoarsely, speaking in our tongue, "do not stay in this place any longer. Say your peace to John and be done with it. They will ruin you like they tried to ruin me – like they ruined my John."

Her eyes looked down at my hands, because I nervously toyed with my hands. She lifted her black eyes again, and I wondered if that was what it was like to look into my own eyes, so dark and full of Gypsy heritage.

"Do it, chey," she said. Her voice had cleared. "Step away from that threshold. Back into the street."

I did. I did, because I still believed in warnings from women of great knowing in this Gypsy world. Esme was one of those women. She followed, slow and deliberate, always looking down at my hands, always focused on them as if there was something held in my palms that I could not see, something in the etched lines there, a woven pattern.

I felt droplets of rain slip around my cheeks, around my lips, down my throat and beneath my collar.

"I am so sorry, Esme," I told her, speaking in our own tongue again. My words were much more clunky from disuse, but warm with emotion, fierce with conviction.

I was stood on the street in front of their old house, where the Shelbys had grown – where John had once played and lived and left for war and returned, eventually.

"I know," she said. She stood so strongly, so certainly, that it was as if nothing had hurt her at all. But her eyes glistened, her lips were scrunched between her teeth whenever she did not speak, for she held in tears and fury. "But I warn you now – be rid of this place. Go back to London, back to your man. Do not feel guilt for it either. Another night in that house and you would have become that portrait in your dreams."

I felt a coldness trickling along my throat that came not from the rain, but rather that Esme had known about my dreams and known about the portrait that I had seen – a portrait of myself, I understood, slashed and torn open and made of colours blended madly together.

Again, her eyes dropped to my hands. I lifted them to fix my scarf and brush away the droplets that still fell over the rim of my hat and found my cheeks.

But her eyes did not move.

She looked at my stomach. She had always been looking at my stomach, and her black eyes slowly lifted.

"Have you bled, Willa?"

She had not called me chey – my real name sounded soft and cold on her lips all at once. I felt oddly faint, oddly distant – oddly, oddly, oddly – because my chest pounded with fear and hope all blended into one hot, thick desire that rolled through me so intensely that I stepped away from her, so minutely that it was barely a step at all.

"Don't," I whispered.

"Have you bled?" she repeated.

"I – I don't remember," I said. "But it can't be. I haven't been sick, I haven't –…"

She looked down again. "I asked you not to enter this house, because if what I sense in you is true, then it would be your first act of protection never to bring it in here. Not in this place. Even to be in Small Heath – in Birmingham – is dangerous. I should know. I will bury my husband for knowing it."

She pulled away. Behind her, somebody said that it was time for the funeral – to place her husband in a wagon and set it alight and send his ashes into the wind, scattered far from her. Then she leaned forward again and surprised me with a kiss on my right cheek; into my skin, she whispered, "Mosaic windows, eh?"

What strength had still been in me left me then, and I stared at her.

"Go, chey. Be away from this place. There will be another time, for us," she said, "For the Shelby curse will taint my children no longer."

She had wanted to say more. I heard it, whispered through creaking floorboards and shoes, just like I had heard it in that other house. But her whispers had not been so mocking and faint. They had been warm, kind, whispering what I had only ever wanted to hear.

I did what she told me and left that place behind.

xii

The appointment had been made far across town, under a false name; Charlotte Dogs, I had called her. I scratched her name onto the list of others, tugged my scarf closer around me and settled between the other women around me, my hands shaking more than they ever had in the past few days. I felt watched – but when I looked around, the other women tended to their babies or looked at the floorboards, seemingly unaware of my own nervousness. I flinched at the call of her name.

Ms Charlotte Dogs? Charlotte Dogs?

xiii

It was quicker than I had thought it might be, though I had heard Franny talk about it many times. The doctor had asked if I was married – if I had expected it. I felt a numbness in my hands, my lips were slack and twitchy. I answered stoically. I signed more papers from him, paid more fees. I stepped out into the street. I saw the world around me and felt that I was floating above it, somewhere in the wind with John.

xiv

For Esme had been right in her prediction, and euphoria was all that I could feel.