xXx

The village was settled by a moor, shaded with trees and bluffs on both sides of its flanks. It was an inconsequential place filled with natives who had lived there since time immemorial, where grandfathers and great grandfathers and greater grandfathers had tilled the same soil their sons did now, smoked the same kilns and tended to the same cemetery. Memory was in the mud here, in the stained-glass windows of the church, from the cobbled stone to the thatched roofs, families had lived and breathed and died in this place over and over and over again.

Henry Johnson had his fair share of memories of this village too. There was old man Thornton's fence where he and his friend, Rodney Livingston, had kicked a hole into the side of after they had tried to retrieve their ball from the garden. There was the pharmacy sign, the one Patrick Farley had knocked off the door when he had stolen a penny sweet on a dare. There was Mrs Wilson's cat crossing a narrow street, the one who had ate poor Lucy Harper's pet hamster, the worst thing to have happened in this sleepy village in over thirty years according to some.

Life was a quite as a murmur here, as gentle as the stream to the west, and often times the parish was bathed in golden sunlight of an early English summer. Bouncing off the white-washed walls, reflecting from bakery windows, and catching gilt dust in the air like Christmas tinsel on an evergreen. In spring the whole place smells of apples due to the Orchard down south.

And Henry Johnson wanted to burn the entire lot down to the fuckin' ground.

xXx

Henry Johnson, born Michael Gray, didn't know when or where his restlessness came from. It seemed to him that he merely noticed it one day as a toddler first notices their shadow. With a startled but perhaps perplexed oh, was that always there? All he truly knows is that it was at hand, had been at hand for a while now, and was growing each passing year where nothing ever changes in this drowsy hamlet.

He doesn't understand it at first. He does well in school, is top of his class with numbers, and he has friends. Good friends. Fellow classmates he has known since Mr Picketts nursery classes at the local, and only, primary school. He does his chores, churns butter with his mother, and tends to the garden and pitch with his father, and he's always up before dawn and asleep by moonrise.

The disquiet gets worse after meeting Father Hughes.

xXx

Billy Rogers came back from the war a whole other man. He was older than Henry, a man grown while he was still a boy, but the village is small and gossip is rife and as only one of three men from this modest rural community that had been drafted and had come home in one piece, relatively, people talk.

Billy Rogers doesn't.

He doesn't talk at all.

Henry sees him at the pub some nights, when he goes to meet his friend Rodney for a game of kick-about whose parents own the inn. Billy sits at the back, a pint of beer warming in front of him, and he stares dead ahead at nothing at all for hours. Rodney says that's all he does, stare and then go, leaving behind an untouched beer now flat and foul sitting in a puddle of condensation on the table. Rodney's mother tuts as she spots him, handing treacle tarts to the boys fresh from the oven, shaking her head sadly.

"Poor boy. Ain't gonna find no good work with that arm of his."

Henry's smart enough to not say it's the lack of his left arm that would hinder any job proposal. No one knows how Billy Rogers lost the limb, and Billy sure isn't speaking, but that was another coin for the rumour mill. Rodney thinks it was an incensed Italian with a knife. Mrs Smith whispers of a land mine on the coast of Gallipoli. Henry doesn't really care how or why it was gone, only where it ended up.

Outside the village.

He's only brave enough to wander up to the table one night and ask a question just once.

"What's it like out there?"

Henry doesn't mean the war, not even Gallipoli, but there. Away from their village. Down the Forney road and straight into a city, anywhere but here where it smelled like fuckin' apples.

Billy blinked over his beer, keeps staring dead ahead, and said one word back.

"Hell."

It does nothing to change Henry's mind. He wants to see the world outside his village all the more even if it would cost him an arm and a voice.

xXx

Henry was sixteen when he makes one aborted move of many.

"I want to join the army."

His mother, Rosemary Johnson, has her back to him facing the kitchen counter, kneading bread dough with her pink apron on. Suddenly she scoffs, suddenly she stops, and suddenly her merry whistling whittles down to a bitter bite.

"Don't be ridiculous, Henry."

The name chaffs something fierce, the name that wasn't really his own but what Rosemary had thought appropriate when she and her husband had fostered him. Michael, she had once said, was too common. Much too common. Henry sounded better. Strong. Stout. British.

"You saw poor Billy, didn't you? May God rest his sweet soul."

God wouldn't rest anything according to the bible Henry was forced to read every Sunday at service. Suicide was punishably by burning for eternity.

Wherever Billy Rogers ended up, Henry was sure God hadn't concerned himself about it.

"The war's over, Ma. I'd simply be doing service at home, at some base, maybe in Suffolk or Plymouth-"

And finally, finally, he would get out this pretty village, with its pretty green, and it's pretty Orchard. Where he would never have to smell apples again.

Rosemary Johnson begins kneading her dough once more, flicking flour over the counter, but Henry sees her shoulders. Taut. Levelled. He'd hit some unseen nerve, and for a moment he feels guilty. Hot, white shame at upsetting the woman who had given him this house, food on the table every night, a comfy bed to sleep in.

Everything that just wasn't enough.

"Hush now, Henry. We've been through this. You'll start an apprenticeship at the pharmacy that Mr Davies has been kind enough to offer you this summer. You'll get a good wage, and you can stay close to home, can still help your father out on the farm, and I'll hear nothing more about this 'army' malarky."

That was the end of the discussion. His life mapped out in steps colour coded by his apron wearing mother. She means well, Henry knows this. God, he knows it, and he comes to hate her for it all the same. Especially when, three weeks later, he sees Rodney off down Forney road, heading for the nearest train station where he would sign up for the army in Cambridge, and Henry-

Henry had his lunch packed in a little paper bag ready for his first day at the pharmacy.

xXx

He doesn't last long at the pharmacy. On the second day of his second month working under Mr Davies something terrible takes over. Something dark and angry and hurting. He was in the back, sorting medication for the pill dispenser, popping packets one foil at a time. And another. And another. And another. He had been doing this for weeks now. Hours. pills. More pills. New pills. Old pills. Small pills. Large pills.

It never fuckin' ended.

Tomorrow more pills would need to be filled back in. The day after that too. Red. Blue. Green. Yellow. White.

Fuckin' pills.

Henry dropped the packet, his blood hot and thumping, roaring in his ears-

He doesn't remember punching the dispenser, cracking the casing with his bleeding knuckles. He doesn't remember upending the till, or throwing over the rack with the beauty creams charmingly packaged inside. He doesn't remember shouting, nor the startled and scared face of Mr Davies, but he remembers his father's disappointed look on the way home when Mr Davies rang him up and told him Henry wasn't coming in tomorrow or any other day after that.

"What has gotten into you Henry, huh? This is not acceptable. It's not proper. It's not the Johnson way."

The Johnson way.

No, the Johnson way was living here, in this same house, until he was old and grey and decrepit. The Johnson way would be marrying Lucy Harper, who his mother was already setting up awkwardly stilted Sunday tea meetings after services with isn't she pretty, Henry? Wouldn't she just make a delightful mother, Henry? She lives just across the road from us, I'm use her father wouldn't mind if you called on her one Thursday afternoon, Henry.

Henry. Henry. HENRY.

"My name is fuckin' Michael!"

His father stares long and hard at him in the kitchen doorway in the ensuing silence, his mother winces behind him, and there was that disappointment again, that slight disdainful glare down a long nose.

Michael can't take it.

He storms out and he doesn't look back.

xXx

He does come back eventually, of course. Michael has no where else to go. Maybe he shouldn't have. Maybe he should have just kept walking and walking and walking until he hit sea, and then began to swim until he couldn't swim no more or he finally reached new land.

It worked for the Americans, didn't it.

"You know they were Gypsies, right?"

His mother is knitting as he stared out the living room window. The blackberry bush out front had been in that same spot for over a century. Nearly four generations of Johnsons had picked fruit from its branches. Another four more, if his parents had any say, would likely do the same.

Nothing ever fucking changes here.

"I know, Ma. You told me."

The clack of her needles ring bright in the air and feels like the pecking of crows across the back of his neck, and Michael knows what's coming. He's heard this time and time again.

"Bad lot if you ask me. They move around and wreck every spot they step in. Turn pastures to mud slicks with their horses. Thieve anything not tied down. Carry off young, good girls to God knows where for the Lord have mercy what. Can't trust a Gypsy, my father always said. They would sell their own mother to the devil for a thimble of gin. Just look at the state you were when we took you in, lice in your hair and-"

Michael cuts in sharply, but his voice never rises, it never falls. It's a flat thing like Billy Rogers' beer.

"And no clothes on my back, running wild and barely able to talk. You've said, Mother."

Michael doesn't remember much of his time before his mother and father, before the Johnson house and the Johnson blackberry bush and the Johnson expectations of normalcy. It's all a blurry sea of sensations to him that he keeps fuckin' swimming through hoping for land.

A whistle of a tune. A heavy weight in his arms almost as if he was holding something that giggled and squirmed, a flash of black curls and the smell of bluebells and oak moss.

What Rosemary says might be true, Michael was only a year old and some months when he was taken off his birth mother and placed here. Everything she said about Gypsies might be true, the Lord knew Michael had never met one in this village that never changes. Everything his mother does and says might be sincere and honourable, and Michael feels like he's going to explode like the land mine that took Billy Rogers arm anyway.

"Your mother was a criminal, you know? A nasty piece of work, I think. Too busy making booze to think of her boy. I just-"

A huff, the ruffle of shifting yarn as if she had placed her needles down in her lap but couldn't work up the gumption to let go fully.

His mother could never do that.

"I just don't want to see you turn out that same way. You're a good boy with a good heart, and nothing like those people."

Those people.

It was always those people, weren't it? Never our people. Introspection was harder than judgement. The meaning isn't lost on Michael. To his mother, to his father, to this village, it was their love and this house and their picture-perfect paranoia that had changed him from one of those to one of them.

Something proper and appropriate and good.

Good boy.

Michael had heard that before, hadn't he? He knew what his mother thought of good people, knew what they could do, and it's a spark that breaks in the middle of his chest like a turkey wishbone being snapped.

"You said the same of Father Hughes, remember? You said he was such a good man; he couldn't possibly have touched-"

He hears the creak of a knitting needle breaking, and Michael finds some sick satisfaction in the noise that he wasn't the only thing in the room cracking under the pressure.

"Enough."

His mother's voice is dark and dead, chewed out between clenched teeth.

"We've been over this. Whatever you thought happened couldn't possibly have been-... He's a man of the cloth, Henry. They don't… they don't do that."

Good boy.

If being good was being like Father Hughes, Michael would rather have a bullet in his head.

xXx

Michael has known about the letter since he was seven and came across it in his mother's jewellery box when looking for trouble like all children did. Rosemary didn't know he had read it, likely didn't know Michael knew it existed, but he did.

He thought about it sometimes, that little hidden letter, when it feels like this village is closing in on him. When he dreams of the bluffs falling on his head and the farm land rising to drown him, and the blackberry bush as his tombstone. Forever a part of this parish he had never stepped foot outside of.

His mother's name is Elizabeth Gray.

He has a younger sister called Hester.

A promise of coming to get him soon. A pledge of a united family. A potential of happiness on the horizon.

Michael wonder's if they're dead sometimes, or if they had simply forgotten about him. If Hester was with their mother or still, like him, in some village that smells of apples where time can eat you up and gobble you down.

He plays with the idea of setting out on his own, letter in hand, to track them down. The thought never lasts long, as daydreams tend to do.

His mother had, long ago, gotten rid of his foster papers. Burned them, thrown them out with the slurry, or merely torn them up, they're gone and with them any information on where exactly Michael had come from.

He's seventeen when he takes the letter out the jewellery box and throws it down the wishing well.

Dreams were for children. He wasn't a child anymore. He hadn't been a child since Father Hughes-

He throws it down the well and lets the dark waters take it.

Elizabeth Gray, Hester, they're bright blazes in the sky of Michaels mind, embers of a gone-out fire, alterations of the season, shifts of blood and sand and fortune. It seems silly to try and hold onto that in a village that never fuckin' changes.

Michael's learned that by now.

Nothing ever changes, and neither would he.

xXx

Mr Davies offers his job back after a year of probationary work in the stock room of squaring off prescription pads. Michael does his duty, wears his Henry Johnson mask strapped on tight, and he slowly falls through the days and years.

He took Lucy Harper on a date to the Orchard, as every other teen had done. He works the farm with his father, and bakes with his mother, waves to Mrs Wilson in the street and offer's to fix Mr Livingstone's window, and he petrifies inside.

Turns to bluff granite, his very own grave.

He's nineteen and some when his father comes back in from delivering milk from their cows to their neighbours. He has his thick walking boots on, kicks the mud of on the welcome mat three-times for each foot like he always did, and he's scowling as he comes into the kitchen to find Michael's mother baking and himself resting after an afternoon of work at the pharmacy.

"Got to go out to the farm before tea, dear. Lock up the barn and put the cows and hens away."

"Oh?"

Michael's mother asks as she wipes her hands off on a dish cloth.

"Saw a gypsy lurking on a horse near Forney road. Must have just come into town. Where there's one, they'll be more. Not sure if they'd try taking a cow, but you can never be too careful around that lot."

That lot.

Not him though, not Michael, Michael was Henry Johnson now, and Henry Johnson was good.

His mother's gasp is affronted, insulted, outraged.

"You don't think-"

She cuts herself off, glances Michael's way sharply, and he merely carried on eating his apple.

"No, dear. Didn't see one of those ridiculous wagons, so I doubt they'll be staying long. Must just be passing through. A straggler, hopefully."

His mother shook her head ruefully, bending over to pull the fresh bread out the oven.

"Still, best be careful. If I have to go out tomorrow I'll leave my pearls and rings behind."

The apple snaps, and Michael hadn't realized he'd chewed it to the core, bit through seed and stem and juicy flesh.

He stands, throws it in the bin, and heads for the back door.

"Where are you going?"

He pauses with his hand on the handle.

"To help Dad put the cows and chickens away-"

His mother, almost frantically, flutters over to him in a flurry of skirts, snatching him around the shoulder to lead him back into the kitchen.

"Oh, no, dear. You sit and have tea, I'm sure your father can cope on his own for once."

His father nods, smiling a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"Aye, you rest lad."

"But-"

His mother ushers him back into his seat, but he can feel the tremble of her fingers on his shoulder.

"You know what? Why don't you call Mr Davies and take the day off tomorrow? You haven't had a holiday in over a year. I'm sure he wouldn't mind, and it's been so long since you've spent much time with me. We can pack some cucumber sandwiches up and have a picnic at the orchard, yes? Like the good ol' days."

Good ol' days.

Michael knew, at this point, what his mother thought of as good and what he thought of as good were completely opposite things. Yet, Michael smiles, Michael nods, Michael eats his dinner and talks with his mother over filled bone china teacups-

And he wakes two hours early the next morning, long before even his father would wake to collect eggs from the hen house, and he goes to work.

Nothing ever changes.

Maybe, just maybe, for fuckin' once, that should bite someone else on the arse.

xXx

Michael's on his lunch break, carrying a delivery for Mr Harper's sciatica medication, when he decides to take a short cut by crossing the green. He tells himself he isn't looking for a horse, tells himself he wouldn't know a gypsy when he saw one anyway.

They both turn out to be lies.

There's a young women he spots straight away, it was hard not to, sitting on the edge of the wishing well. Michael's never seen anything quite like her before. She's bright and vibrant against the backdrop of an English village's white-washed pristine gardens. Her headscarf is red and gold, her billowy blouse white, her hair, slung in a braid across her shoulder that dangled to her hip, a black so dark it glimmered, curls brushing burnished skin, and her vest is purple, and her skirts are blue and green and dancing across the laces of men's scuffed boots.

He thinks of the pills back at the pharmacy, all neatly placed in their packaging, not touching, separated, divided proper.

The dispenser can't split and conquer someone like that though, like this young woman. Her colours bleed out into the air and shine.

She must have spotted him looking from all the way across the green because she-

She waves, smiling, teeth white and cheeks dimpled and impossibly bigger than her skin.

Michael's feet move forward without a thought.

xXx

"I don't suppose you know where thirty-two Church street is, do you? I've tried asking everyone else I've crossed paths with but it doesn't look like anyone wants to speak to me."

She laughs as if she finds it funny, this aversion to little old her, and her voice is light and lilting, struck with a strange accent Michael, who had never been out from this village, couldn't place. Thick like honey, but sweet like nectar.

Michael pauses a step away.

"Why?"

She frowns at the strange answer, just a momentary duck and pull to her eyebrows. The scar on her forehead peeping out the edge of her scarf a mean looking thing in its peek-a-boo hello.

It's her eyes though that hold a man still. Slate outer rings with ice all the way to the black, and it was like looking through a glacier that had somehow had its heart set of fire.

And those blue eyes fixed him in all the best ways.

He knows then. He knows without her answer. Knows impossibly. Knows because he smells bluebells and oak moss, and feels a weight in his arms and hears a gummy giggle in his ear.

"I'm looking for someone. I heard he lives around here. I just-"

"Michael Gray."

The girl blinks at him, head tilting, voice suddenly hesitant.

"Aye. You know him?"

He doesn't answer. He asks and he knows.

"Hester?"

A blink, a beat, a breath-

A toothy smile.

"Michael?"

Michael doesn't know who moves first, himself or the girl, it didn't seem so important in the end, but suddenly they're hugging.

Michael holds on for dear life.

xXx

Michael folded the letter up and handed it back, resting against the edge of the wishing well. Hester, or Hettie as she insisted, took the letter from him gently and dipped it into the breast of her vest.

"I had one of those but I-"

He thinks of the dark waters behind him, the anger over the years, swallows it all down and smiles.

"Lost it. So you met her then?"

Hettie kicked her boots in the grass, kicking up the green.

If only his mother could see him now. Tearing up pitch with a gypsy.

"I wouldn't call it meeting… More spotted and ran. Tommy Shelby found me though and gave me her address. Yours too. That's how I found you."

Michael frowned in the dull afternoon sun.

"Who's Tommy Shelby?"

Hettie shrugged with a grin.

"No idea. Family I think. Melancholy fellow, that one."

Family I think.

But it wasn't just a thought any longer, was it? Not just a daydream. Not hopes that could be swallowed by dark waters. They were there with addresses and faces, and within reach.

"And you're all from Birmingham?"

Again Hettie shrugged.

"They're from Birmingham. I'm from… Around."

"A gypsy?"

"For a while. Something…"

She wavered, thoughts churning behind her teeth.

"Something must have gone wrong with my placement by the Social services because I ended up ditched at the River Thames in a wicker basket. I don't know what happened, but there it is. I bounced around after that. Lived in London until I was eleven, then spent most of my time in the Highlands up in Scotland. Hence the accent. Then I got-… I ended up with a Roma kumpanias. I've been with them ever since. Must be luck, right?"

At his confused cock of a brow, Hettie chuckled.

It tinkled like windchimes.

"Caravan group. We only have seven in our kumpanias but we stick together. They're good people."

Good people.

For the first time, the only time, Michael believes it.

"Those wagon things?"

Another chuckle, this one dancing in the wind.

"Vardo. They're called Vardo."

Michael glanced down to himself, to his tweed trousers and his neatly pressed shirt, so different to Hettie's multicoloured skirts and headscarf, to her sun ripened skin.

His mother, Rosemary, was pale. Spent large amounts of coin each month to buy special creams to keep it that way. Always left the house in a large, brimmed straw hat, and tried to keep indoors more often than not in the threat of a tan. She'd faint if she found a freckle.

Michael tried to picture Hettie hiding from the sun, hunkered under hats and roof-

He can't imagine it.

"So you live here now?"

Michael glared at the houses across the way.

"I've always lived here. Never left."

Hettie's heel struck the well's wall as she kicked her feet, and there it was again, that smile.

"Well, that's partially why I'm here. I thought you might want to-"

xXx

"Excuse me! You can't sit there!"

The voice came from behind, irritated but restrained, appropriately passive aggressive. Michael glanced over his shoulder, spotted Mr Livingstone marching across the green, his lawn gate open and swinging in the breeze across the road.

Hettie stiffened beside him, glanced around, sincerely looking for something.

"I don't see any keep off the grass signs?"

When Mr Livingstone stopped his cheeks were red and veined and marbled like raw steaks, his eyes dark and hands fisted at his hips.

"Didn't think we would need to put any up. Not like you lot could read 'em, anyway. I'm surprised you speak English at all and not that gibberish."

Hettie froze, a thump, a patter, foot still from swinging.

She stood slowly, brushing down her skirts, keeping the well between her and the man.

"We'll just move along then and-"

Mr Livingstone wasn't having any of it.

"I said you can't sit here. He can. Move along before I call the police."

Hettie chuckled, windchimes and harp strings, but the laughter died in her throat when she saw how very serious Mr Livingstone was.

"I-… I wasn't doing anything-"

"We don't know that do we? Might have been dropping something in the well. I've heard stories of that, you know? Gypsies poisoning wells and hurting our kids-"

"Why would I want to hurt a child?"

"It's what your lot does. Come around here, marking the place up-"

Michael's voice is calm, relaxed and quiet. He feels anything but.

"Shut the fuck up, Barry."

Mr Livingstone spluttered, cheeks wobbling, gaze darting.

"Excuse me?"

Michael stood, dusting off his own hands.

This village which never changes, refuses to change, refuses to move along in time and place and-

He can't take it. He never could. He never will.

"I said shut the fuck up, Barry. Or do you want me to tell your wife that you've been fuckin' Rodney's old baby sitter since we were nine? That her child might not be her husbands after all, aye?"

"Why I… I… I ought to speak to your mother, young man-"

"Go the fuck ahead!"

Michael bellowed, stepping closer, stepping up, stepping out.

"And while you're at it, tell her I won't be home tonight. Or tomorrow. Maybe never. This place is fuckin' hell. I'm gone."

Mr Livingstone panicked, but didn't dare try and come around the well.

"You can't just go. You have to pack a bag, buy tickets and you're young-"

"I'm nineteen. I'm a man now in the eyes of the law. I can go wherever I want when I want. Come on, Hettie. Let's go before I blow this God damned wishing well to the heavens."

Michael turned, marching, Hettie's light footsteps ringing out behind him. He didn't stop until he got to Forney road.

xXx

"Michael? Michael?! Michael, wait a minute-"

A hand grasped his elbow gently, tugging, and only then did Michael stop his march. He turned, saw Hettie staring at him-

There's no disappointment in her face. Only naked concern.

"Are you alright?"

She didn't tell him it wasn't proper, didn't tell him what he did wasn't the Johnson way, didn't even ask for an explanation or excuse.

Michael can't remember the last time someone had asked him if he was alright.

Finally, he could breathe. Really truly breathe. He didn't feel like he was swimming anymore, trying desperately to keep his head above water. Land was underfoot, and an anchor was around his elbow.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-… I just need to get out of here before I lose my mind."

Hettie didn't let go of his arm, her grip didn't tighten or loosen, just held. I'm here.

"What about your parents? Won't they be worried?"

Michael thinks about his mother in the kitchen leading him from the door. He thinks about her shared glance with is father, and the plan for a picnic.

"I think they've been expecting me to leave for a while now. I think… I think maybe it's for the best."

His hand slowly rose, clasped over Hettie's own, fingers squeezing, manners kicking in.

"Of course I would never expect you to take me with you. I can find an inn until-"

Hettie scoffed and shook her head, braid bouncing.

"Of course you're coming with me. That's why I came here. I wanted to know if you wanted to go meet our mum together. Strength in numbers, and all that. Do you want to?"

Would he? Yes. Yes.

"I would like that."

Hettie grinned, patted his arm, slipped her hold out of under his, and-

Whistled. Loudly.

From the treeline by the side of the road, a beast came barrelling out. Michael stumbled backwards, reached for Hettie, tried to drag her back out of the warpath of the stallion, but she sidestepped his sweep and quicker than a blink, quicker than Michael could think, slung herself over the back of the black horse who neighed and trounced as she bobbed on his back.

"Good boy, Demon. Come on then, hop up. We have an eight-hour ride to Birmingham. Might take us all night if you stand there with your mouth flapping in the wind like that."

Michael floundered, but slapped his jaw shut.

"There's… There's no saddle, Hettie."

Hettie scoffed at him, clicking her heels gently into the stallions side, who calmed at the gesture.

"You don't need a saddle to ride a horse, Michael. You just need nerve and a steady heart."

Bending over, she held out her hand to him, eyes bright against the back drop of the sky, fingers splayed.

"Come on, I'll help you up. Demon can take both our weight."

Michael glanced down the road, the way the horse was looking, the road he had never been brave enough to walk, the road out.

Michael's spine straightened and he took the offered hand. It took some wiggling and heaving to get him on the back of the horse but once he was on Hettie clicked her tongue on the back of her teeth and Demon ran.

"Is it just me or does this place smell of rotten apples?"

Michael laughed with the wind in his hair.

"Yeah it bloody does."

Next Chapter: The bookies on Watery Lane gets a knock on the door late one evening…

I know all us delinquents are here for the Tommy filth so I got this one out as fast as I could so we can get back to the spicy Birmingham boys. This is for all us thirsty cretins.

Notice: The views given by the Johnsons and some inhabitants of the village are common racist, extremely racist, rhetoric people often levy against the Roma and Traveller communities. It's not often talked about, the racism Roma/Traveller people face in everyday life by a majority of people. I really wanted to highlight that in my fic though and not gloss over it. Racism against Roma/Traveller communities is still very, very prevalent today in Britain and Ireland, and doesn't really get tackled the way it should or how any other form of racism is, thank fuck, being talked about. It's a real-life issue that I fully and wholly stand against passionately, as everybody should with ANY form of racism, and I want to use this fic to express that.

On that very important note, Friends, Families and Travellers is a UK based organisation that work to end racism and discrimination against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people. If you want to educate yourself on the matters at hand that I truly believe everyone should be made aware of, please give their site a read through. It is very informative. And if you belong to one of those peoples and are facing any form of discrimination/racism, be it institutional or otherwise, they're there to help you and have been active since 1994. You are not alone, and you deserve to be heard and have justice.

They also have some vital campaigns going on against the harsher policing bill in Britain against nomadic peoples which is very loose in interpretation and could be crippling for some communities, lobbying for MPs to sign pledges, and work going on against the high suicide rates in Roma and Traveller communities. If you are British, please, please take a look and perhaps five minutes out of your day to add your name to some of the pledges/petitions. If we all speak together to say this is not acceptable then our voices will be heard.

Thank you to everybody who has favourited, followed and reviewed. If you have the time, drop a review, they're the fuel to my mad muses. 😉