It had been over a month now, and Florence had finally settled into the rhythm of life in Birmingham. Still comforted by the whiskey in her tea, she'd taken it day by day, and suddenly found life passing her by faster than she could think about it. Surprisingly after the pub walkout fiasco, her dad had seen it fit to give her more shifts in the pub, and she had worked practically every day except Sundays since. Florence knew that really it was because of her stepmother's declining health. She was still yet to visit her family home, if she could call it that. Since her stepmother had moved in twelve years prior, it hadn't been her home any more, but it hadn't felt like her home since her mother had died. She and her stepmother had never gotten on well. Helen had taken every opportunity possible over the last twelve years to make Florence feel unwelcome, like she didn't have a place in the family. A small part of her resented her dad for never taking her side, but she hadn't exactly made things easy for him. From the day her stepmother moved in, it had been Florence's personal mission to cause as much trouble as possible, an art she'd refined over time. The following years involved sneaking out of the house, dancing on tables, getting too drunk to stand up, not coming home until the following morning (or going missing for days), thieving, lying, fighting, fooling around with John Shelby, the occasional line of cocaine, and much more. As far as Florence knew, she was having the time of her life, while her father couldn't sleep for the worry of it. She knew it was only a matter of time until they'd try to get rid of her, whatever the circumstances might be.
She would see her younger brother, Eddie, out playing in the streets every day. They had never been particularly close, but she felt for the boy. She knew what it was like to have a sick and ailing mother, so she would always take the time to bring him a treat when she was out running her weekly errands. Whether it be sweets or a new little knick knack to play with, she knew it made all the difference to have something to look forward to when things were bad. That was how Florence was introduced properly to young Finn Shelby. Of course she knew who he was; she'd spent a lot of time around the little boy when he was a toddler, not that he remembered. The two became quickly reacquainted when Florence discovered that Finn and Eddie were playmates, and soon she was bringing sweets for the both of them.
That morning she was doing exactly that, greeting the boys with a smile on her face and handing them a small brown bag of goodies. A chorus of "thank you" was enough for Florence, and she turned to continue with her day. She wore a blue dress that matched the hazy sky, and along with her signature boots and coat it was enough to make heads turn. She enjoyed the fact that people looked at her and she pretended not to notice. Caught up in her own head, her boots thudded on the cobblestones like usual. She wasn't paying much attention to the goings on around her until she turned the corner and saw the commotion ahead of her. It looked as though all of the houses had been looted and there was uproar in the streets, with people trying to collect their belongings that were strewn about the road.
Florence's hand flew to her mouth as she stopped in her tracks. "What the fuck…" she whispered under her breath.
"Excuse me, sir, what happened here?" She stopped a man who was collecting things in the street.
"The coppers are raiding houses, apparently looking for communists," the man responded, before continuing past her.
Florence had no choice but to continue on her way. She wanted to help people but she knew her manpower alone would be no use. Her feet moved faster than she could think, and before she knew it she had entered the front door of 6 Watery Lane. She found Polly in the kitchen and not a man in sight.
"Where are they?" Florence seethed as she moved across the room, peering out of the window at the chaos in the street outside.
"Good afternoon, Flo. They've all gone to the fair. And before you start, I already know what's going on out there." Polly sat with pursed lips, clearly as mad as Florence at the situation.
She turned quickly on her heel to face Polly. "And what is it that you already know? Because I'm sure that it's more than just rounding up communists."
Polly didn't get a chance to answer, because the front door opened and in walked the people Florence was looking for.
"So, you lot all just pissed off to the fair while the coppers tear people's houses apart? You're working with the police now?" Florence pointed accusingly at the brothers as they piled into the kitchen, along with several other men. She recognised them as Peaky Blinders but didn't know them by name.
Tommy looked towards the ceiling, shaking his head in exasperation, his expression unreadable. "Jesus Christ, Florence."
Before anyone of them could respond properly to Florence's accusation, Polly stepped in. "For fuck's sake, everyone sit down." They did as they were told, with Florence joining the men at the table, her arms folded and her face sour. She was surprised when John offered her beer from the bucket, but she gratefully accepted. She was even more surprised that she wasn't asked to leave - Florence was under the impression that the Shelby family and by association the Peaky Blinders wanted nothing to do with her after the reception she had received weeks prior. Yet here she was, a welcome member of their personal assembly. She took it as a sign. Maybe things were getting better, maybe things were settling down like Arthur said it would.
Once everyone was settled, Polly got on with it quickly. "The coppers told everyone Arthur had agreed to it when he was arrested." She looked around at the table. "They said the Peaky Blinders had cleared out to the fair to let them do it."
Arthur slammed his glass down on the table. "I never said nothing to that copper about smashing up bloody houses."
"All right. Which pubs did they do?" Tommy broke the silence, putting the question to the room. But he was only looking at Florence. She didn't hear Polly's response as she held Tommy's lingering eye contact. He was leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the table from her, a cigarette hanging between his lips. She felt as though he was trying to tell her something. Tommy had never been a man of many words, and just one look had Florence second guessing herself.
"… only one they didn't touch was The Garrison."
It was as if at that moment everyone remembered Florence was in the room, as they all turned to look at her at the mention of The Garrison. She was snapped out of her staring contest with Tommy by the sudden attention and raised her glass to everyone. "Thank fuck for that," she uttered, smirking indignantly. John snorted at her comment.
Polly continued. "Make sure people think we're in on it. He's smart, this copper." As the men began to disperse, following Tommy's orders, Florence remained at the table. Her finger traced the rim of her now empty glass as she braced herself for a long afternoon of heavy lifting and consolation, ignoring the room around her. Blocking out noise was something she'd gotten good at over the years. The only downside was it meant getting lost in her head.
"Flo, you don't work on Sundays?" She was broken from her thoughts by Polly's question. She shook her head no, glancing around the now empty room. She had hoped to catch Tommy before he went wandering off again to question him about why he'd been eyeing her up. Despite being everywhere all at once, the man was always hard to find. "Then go on down the lane to John's house and keep an eye on the kids."
Florence was gobsmacked at Polly's suggestion. She had never taken well to being a babysitter because as she insisted repeatedly, children didn't like her. She hadn't even met John's kids yet. "You're joking? You want me to stay and watch the kids? I'm going to out to help people."
She began to rise from her seat as John appeared in the doorway. "Please, Flo." He said, a pleading tone to his voice. He didn't give her a chance to respond before pulling on his hat and exiting the house behind the other men.
Florence had never been one for cooking, but having four hungry children asking her for dinner, she had no choice but to make them something. John's kids weren't as bad as she thought they would be. They were very dirty, as were most of the kids that played in the streets in Small Heath. The youngest one, Maggie, who couldn't be more than two, hadn't left her hip since she'd arrived that afternoon, but the others had been unsure of her at first. Two boys and two girls, all the picture of their parents.
"I'm Flo, a friend of your dad's. I've come to look after you." She looked around at them, shrugging off her coat and hanging it up beside the door.
"Are you our new mum?" One of the boys asked as he sat on the stairs wide-eyed.
Flo smiled at him. "No, sweetheart. I'm just here to look after you for today."
"Aunt Polly says that we're to call everyone Aunt and Uncle. Shall we call you Aunty Flo?" Katie, the eldest, questioned. At about six years old, she was the most like Martha of the four of them, and it had broken Florence's heart a little to see her old friend's daughter having to navigate the world without a mum like she did.
They weren't difficult children; they'd played amongst themselves for most of the day while she'd tended to little Maggie. She'd made them a stew from the little food she could find in the cupboards. It wasn't anything special, but she could tell they appreciated having a warm meal in their bellies. It wasn't long after dinner before John returned to the house, and of all things, drunk. All the children rushed to him apart from Maggie, who was being held by Florence, almost knocking him off his feet as he staggered in the doorway. John caught her gaze as she was watching him and gave her a smile.
"Alright, come on. All of you upstairs, get ready for bed." John approached Florence and took Maggie from her arms. "Stay here for a drink." It sounded like more of a demand than a question, but Florence was willing to stick around. For the first time in a long time, she'd had a dry afternoon minus the beer several hours earlier, and the sobriety was beginning to take its toll on her.
She made her way to the kitchen to clean up, trying to make herself useful while she was waiting. She didn't hear him come downstairs.
John had heard about Florence's return on the day she had arrived back in Small Heath and had purposely avoided her at all costs before their confrontation a few weeks prior. He didn't trust himself - passion had always ruled over him when it came to her. But she was everywhere: in his mind, her face on the street, her name whispered around. There was no eluding her. Deep down, John knew that though she had wronged him by leaving him in the lurch, she wasn't at fault for the rest of the hurt he had experienced. It was a hard time for everyone, and she couldn't have had it easy herself to have just left like that. Seeing her again made him realise that what he felt for her wasn't love; it was nothing like what he and Martha had had. It was an intense obsession fuelled by lust, that had fizzled out over their years apart. Now when he looked at her, he didn't know what he felt any more. It certainly wasn't nothing, and it certainly wasn't just scorn, but there was something about the prospect of Florence being around that brought him relief that he hadn't felt for years.
"Sorry about the other day." Florence jumped, turning from the sink with a hand pressed to her chest at the sound of John's voice. He stood with a glass of whiskey in each hand, now in just his rolled-up shirt sleeves. He must have left his jacket upstairs.
"Good. You should be fucking sorry. It wasn't right, what you said to me," she said, her voice stern, retrieving a glass of whiskey from him. She'd struggled with John's words. The guilt had eaten her up inside for days afterwards. "I could bloody smack you, John."
Florence followed John as he headed into the front room, settling on the old sofa next to him. "'Didn't have time to think of what I wanted to say to you before you showed up. Seeing you there… you do things to me, Flo," he slurred. "Don't fucking pretend you know how things were when you left. I didn't know what to do without you." His face was screwed up in scorn, remembering the day he woke up and simply couldn't find the girl he loved.
She reached a hand towards his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. "I've said I'm sorry. I didn't have a choice," she said.
Florence knew he was upset because he wouldn't look at her. "Those months after you left were the worst of my life. Even after France. I didn't know what do with myself." John shook his head, placing his glass of whiskey down and bringing his face to his hands. "Martha was like a bloody angel, being with her made me forget about all of the bad stuff, about you. Then she fucking left me as well."
With that, Florence stood to crouch in front of him, taking his hands from his face and holding them in her own. "Sorry about Martha, John. She was my friend, I know she was an angel. God bless her." Her last sentence came out as a whisper. John stood too, bringing Florence with him and holding her in an embrace so tight she thought he'd break her. She brought a hand up to run through his short, cropped hair, unfamiliar to touch. He'd kept it longer years ago. After a moment, they pulled away, both their eyes wet with unshed tears.
Florence broke the silence as they stared at each other. "You're one of my oldest friends, John, but we were never meant to end up together. We weren't very good for each other, were we?" She gave him a sad smile and he reached up to hold her face in his hands.
"I still can't believe you're here, Flo." He was shaking his head again, as if he couldn't believe she was real. Florence moved from his grasp and they sat side by side once more.
Florence reached for her glass of whiskey, taking a sip, her eyes on John. "Do you forgive me, then?"
"Do I fucking forgive you?" He replied, scoffing at the question, forcing back a smile.
"Yeah. Do you?" She looked at him with amusement, tossing her hair over one shoulder.
John turned to her, a cheeky look on his face. Finally, a look that Florence knew. "Tell you what, you can earn my forgiveness by watching the kids more often," he said.
She responded with a chuckle. "Well, that's fine by me. They've been lovely today." Florence set her now empty glass down.
"Fucking lovely? They're little shits most of the time." John looked genuinely shocked at her claim. The kids had been nothing but trouble since their mother had passed away and the fact that Florence thought they could be anything but had the wheels turning in his mind.
Florence smacked his shoulder as they both laughed. "Oh, fuck off, John. They remind me of you."
The year was 1911. It was winter, and the cold air kissed the skin of the teenagers as they kissed each other, groping for more in the darkness. The only sound that interrupted the silence of the street was the clacking of heels on the ground and the telltale rustling of clothes.
Florence giggled. "Stop it, John. Everyone's waiting for us." Just moments earlier, she had shimmied down the drainpipe in her kitten heels into John's arms - as usual, he couldn't keep his hands off her. She knew her dad would lose it if he discovered her out of bed with John Shelby for another night but she didn't care. As she shoved John away from her playfully, she retrieved a bottle of gin from the inside pocket of her coat and took a sip. Passing him the bottle, she skipped ahead. "Come on, then," she teased.
"Oi, wait!" He trailed behind her like a lost puppy.
They quickly reached the others grouped outside the dance hall. There were more than ten of them and Florence recognised a few faces. She approached the group with John's arm looped over her shoulder and a smile present on her face, and Tommy turned to look in her direction just as she reached them.
"Hello, trouble," he said. He too greeted her with a smile. Tommy's endearing nickname for Florence had come about a couple of years earlier when she'd first started sneaking out to spend nights with them and it became clear that she quite literally brought trouble with her everywhere she went. Without hesitation, Florence pulled herself from John's grasp and went straight for Tommy's arms as he embraced her. Not that John minded very much, as he busied himself with chatting to one of the other girls in the group.
Florence pulled away, about to speak, but was silenced by Tommy grabbing her face in both hands.
"Tom, what are you-" He observed her closely, his eyes focused on her hairline where the bruise was. It was barely visible now, with it being a couple of days old, and she didn't expect Tommy to notice it.
Tommy ran a thumb over her injury. "What's this then, eh?" Some women would be flattered by such attentiveness, but not Florence. She often loathed the fact that Tommy had learned to read her like a book, like his own personal diary, and that he noticed when things were different about her before she could even notice them herself.
Florence shrugged his hands away from her. "Hit my head on the bar again, didn't I? I'm fine, though. I don't need you to give the bar a talking to." She threw her head back in drunken laughter, but her eyes quickly caught Tommy's once again. He gave her a small smile, but he wasn't laughing and she knew why. He'd already told her on multiple occasions that her safety wasn't a joke to him, even a little bump to her head riled him up. It was just the way things were between them. They took care of each other.
"Oh, Tom…" she said, feeling his disappointment at her lack of understanding. She went to reach for him, but was quickly interrupted.
"Come on then, let's get inside before the rain starts." She heard John holler from over her shoulder before he grabbed her around the middle, pressing a sloppy kiss to her cheek. "Come on, love." He whispered in her ear as he led her inside, the others filing in behind them.
Florence had been to the dance hall a handful of times before. You could barely call it a dance hall, it really being more of a community centre. But every other Saturday they'd bring in the record player and dim the lights a little and the youth would congregate. And goodness, did they congregate. Inside, hoards of people had gathered, some couples dancing together in the middle of the room and other stationary groups clustered at the sides. There was a tipsy buzz about the room. She felt John's hands behind her, pulling her coat from her shoulders, and she stopped him to remove the bottle she had hidden away in the pocket. She flashed him a smile, pressing a quick kiss to his lips before he moved away to discard their coats.
Twisting the lid of the bottle and taking long swig, she turned to find Tommy next to her once again. He moved to prise the bottle from her hands before she could drink any more.
"Want me to look after that for you?" He tried to pretend like he was teasing her, but she knew that he wouldn't be giving her the bottle back any time soon.
"Give me the bottle, Tommy." She muttered to him, catching his wrist as tried to turn his back on her.
He ignored her, shrugging her off and instead moving away into the crowd with her bottle of booze in hand.
"Thomas, give it back!" Florence's voice was louder now. She was losing her patience. Ever since she and John had become an item, Tommy had issues with her drinking around John. It was alright when it was just the two of them together. Just a week previously they had ended up falling asleep in the stables because they'd had too much to drink. It was as though he didn't trust John to look out for her like he did.
"What the bloody hell's going on?" John reappeared suddenly, and she turned to look at him. Her annoyance at Tommy melted away when she saw the smile on his face. His eyes were so bright on night's like that.
Florence moved closer to him so he could hear her over the din of the room. "Nothing. Dance with me," she whispered in his ear suggestively.
She dragged him into the crowd, swaying to the music. The two of them danced to the music for a while, pressed together as one, and Florence felt John's lips brushing against her earlobe as he made his way down to her neck, pressing kisses to the soft skin. In that moment, in her drunken stupor, Florence forgot where they were and captured John's lips in a burning kiss. They pulled at each other, trying to get impossibly close, and she could feel John's hands on her backside. And just like that, the feeling was gone. Florence opened her eyes to see Tommy holding John by the collar, looking deeply disappointed.
"That's enough. I'm taking you home," he said, pointing a finger at Florence. His voice was stern and she knew there was no arguing with him. This hadn't been the first time he'd done this, and it wouldn't be the last. She'd worked it out a while ago, that Tommy couldn't stand to see John so close to her, but he would never admit it.
"What the fuck, Tommy," John said in protest, but before he could do anything Tommy had taken Florence by the wrist and was pulling her from the dance hall. She felt his fingers digging into her and she could tell he was mad.
Florence waited until they were outside before she spoke up. "Are you for real, Tom? We were just kissing," she said, flapping her arms angrily.
Tommy just watched her, before stopping to light a cigarette. His lack of commentary on the matter infuriated her further. "You're drunk, Flo," he muttered as he shrugged off his coat and placed it around her shoulders. She hadn't even realised that she was shivering.
"So are half the people in there. And I'm not that drunk, Tom. What's your problem, eh? Is it me and John?" Maybe that was why Tommy took to Florence like he did. She had never been afraid to confront him with the truth. She wasn't scared of the violence or the hardship. She just saw him as a man. He needed someone like that to tell him what's what.
"You're fucking mashed, now let's go home." His booming voice punctuated the end of the conversation. Florence knew she'd pushed him far enough and that was that. Despite his abrupt tone with her, Tommy slung his arm around Florence's shoulders as they walked together.
She wrapped both arms around his waist and she felt his fingers rubbing at her shoulder as they began their silent descent back into the heart of Small Heath. She took a deep breath in, inhaling the smell of him, a comfort to her.
"Don't worry," she whispered, "I only love you."
Tommy thought back to that time, when things were so much less complicated and so much more colourful, as he watched Florence clearing tables through the doorway of the snug. She hadn't noticed it had been left open and he had a clear view of her working. He liked to keep an eye on her, maybe because that was what he was used to with Florence. He wanted to keep her out of trouble and he also just liked watching her. She had changed just as he had, harder now, both in appearance and personality it seemed. But she had always been beautiful to him, stunning him with both her appearance and mind, though he'd never admit it. Still, Tommy felt a sense of disappointment towards her that he couldn't shake, but he wanted to keep her close.
In the past weeks, Florence had been in his thoughts more than he would have liked her to be. When he dreamt of France, he dreamt of her there with him, buried and choking in the mud. The revelation that she was there on the front too had left him reeling. The fact that she'd be willing to put herself in such danger frustrated him to no end. But he knew that was just her. She was strong and she'd do anything to help others.
Tommy downed the glass of whiskey he had been holding in one and placed his glass down before rising from his seat.
He cleared his throat. "Florence." She looked up at him, eyes wide but not surprised. Of course she knew he was there all along.
"Yes, Tommy?" She replied, her voice sweet, aware of Grace watching their interaction from the bar. She wasn't going to bite his head off while they were in company.
"You're coming to Cheltenham with me." His voice was firm. It wasn't a question.
Florence almost laughed in at his statement. "Am I now?" She bit her bottom lip, shaking her head in disbelief.
Tommy was already heading for the door. "Wear something nice."
"Are you for real? I always wear something nice," She called after him. Florence wouldn't admit it, but it was nice to have a conversation with Tommy that wasn't driven by hostility.
He stopped at the door, before turning around to face her again. "Something red. I haven't seen you in red for a long time." And with that, he was gone.
For the first time, Grace had no questions to ask about him.