I started going round to the Shelby's house more after that. I didn't see Thomas or Arthur very much, but I did see John a lot. Him and his friends played with us a lot, but Ada and I had compromised that we'd play in the street outside their house at night so her Aunt Polly could watch over us. She even fed me when we played at night. Proper meals too, not the mush I was usually given by Joe.

Thomas occasionally ate with the family but he usually wasn't anywhere to be seen. In fact, I didn't spend more than two minutes with him close by till I was twelve.

"Oh come on, Dais, every other girl's been kissed. Let me show you," Harry Waller kept trying to push me against the wall and kissing me. Despite the fact that every other girl my age, Ada included, had already been kissed, I didn't want my first kiss to be from Harry Waller, the stuck up boy whose parents gave him everything he wanted. The boy who'd never been cold or hungry or thirsty or truly tired.

"I don't wanna, Harry," I said firmly, pushing him away from me for the second time.

I glanced down the street to see Ada and Jack kissing against the brick wall, using tongues and everything. She'd seen Lizzie Poole kissing a boy like that behind the bakery the other week and she'd been dying to try it out on Jack. They'd been spending a lot more time together recently, and I'd started to feel a bit left out, so when she asked me to come out with her, Jack, and his friend Harry, I immediately said yes without really thinking about it. If I spent too much time indoors at the orphanage I'd run away, far far away, maybe join the gypsies and travel the country going to fairs. I hated it there more than anything and one day I would be rid of it, but not that day. That day, I'd said yes to Ada and, somewhat unsurprisingly, I'd been ditched for Jack, and Harry was still trying to put his mouth on me in any way he could.

He'd managed to get to my neck, his mouth travelling up and down wetly, and it made me grimace.

"Harry, stop it."

His voice got nastier and his hands around my wrists got tighter. "You're nobody, Daisy Smith, what makes you think you're better than me, eh? What makes you think you can say no? My dad says you're gonna be a whore in a few years anyway, a pretty little orphan like you. Said you'd be flat on your back in a whorehouse by the time you're sixteen. So why not let me kiss you, and then you can always say your first kiss was from a Waller."

It was the first time in years that I'd come close to crying. I'd heard stories about girls like me, poor girls with no education, no family, no money whatsoever, and how they'd have to turn to sleeping with people for money just so they could eat. It didn't sound nice. Ada had looked horrified when I brought those girls up. "You can never do anything like that, Daisy, it's for girls like Irene and Lizzie who always flirt and kiss boys. You're better than that, Dais, don't ever do it, okay? It's unholy and wrong and disgusting."

If I was better than that, why did Harry Waller seem to think it was okay for his hands to grip my neck and pull my face closer to his?

"Fucking stop, Harry," I grunted, kneeing him in between his legs like John had told me to if a boy ever tried to hurt me.

Unfortunately, it only made him groan in pain for a second and then he was just angry. His hand whipped out and slapped hard across the face, my lip splitting on one of his rings. It hurt, but I'd had worse. Joe was twice the size of him and had been twice as angry at me at many points in my life.

"You fuckin' cunt," he growled, grabbing me by my neck but from the front this time, squeezing hard enough so that my eyes widened and started to water. "You're gonna kiss me and one day, when you're nothing but a whore who lives to fuck men like my dad says, I'm gonna make you regret that."

And he forced his mouth onto mine, pushing his tongue into my mouth and his body against mine before I could bring my leg up to kick him or my hand up to hit him back. I screamed against his mouth, hoping Ada would hear me and stop him before he got even more violent. His other hand was in my hair, gripping it tight, so when someone pulled him off me, a huge chunk of my red hair went with him.

I yelped in pain and breathed heavily to stop myself from crying. Looking up expecting to see Jack or Ada, I blanched when I saw Thomas Shelby punching Harry right in the nose, blood spraying in all directions and a sickening crunch resonating through the night air.

"You think it's alright to kiss girls who don't want kissing, boy? Hm?" Thomas sounded so mad, and while I was used to people being mad at me, I knew without any doubt that he was mad at Harry and only Harry. And rightly so.

I had the sudden thought that maybe Thomas thought I was going to be a whore too. Maybe that was why he hadn't wanted me and Ada playing too late, playing too much together. Maybe I was a bad influence. Maybe he was disgusted with me.

I stayed quiet as Thomas whispered something in Harry's ear and shoved him away. As I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, careful not to get blood on my dress as it was one of my nicer ones Mrs Light, a neighbour, had given me, I saw Harry scrambling to get away from Thomas, dashing down the street and around the corner shouting something about his father and how he was going to make Thomas regret that. Even shouting threats, he still looked terrified. I couldn't blame him - Thomas looked deadly. Time had only made Thomas Shelby more intimidating. He moved gracefully and silently, but still managed to look threatening. He smiled when he was with his friends but even then you knew that he could hurt you if he wanted to. And he'd clearly wanted to hurt Harry.

'"You alright?"

He was looking at me with the same intensity he had three years ago on that park. It scared me, that someone so young could look so perceptive. It felt like he saw everything about me, from my borrowed dress to the dirt still in my hair from days ago. I didn't like it at all.

"Yeah…" My voice came out shakily and I didn't like it. I always had to be strong around Thomas or else he'd walk all over me, Ada had said. She'd told me to never outright defy him like I'd done at the park, but I should never cower before him. "Or any man," she'd said.

"Ada!" He shouted, not taking his eyes off me and the blood trickling down my chin. "Go home now."

I looked over to see Ada disconnect herself from Jack and look round in surprise. "Tommy!" She quickly pushed Jack away from her so it didn't look compromising, but I knew he'd already seen.

"Just go home, Ada," he said quietly, but I knew she'd heard because she swallowed, looked at me with wide, confused and questioning eyes, waited for me to nod to tell her I was okay, and then grabbed Jack's hand and dashed off down the street, leaving Thomas Shelby and I alone.

"Come on, let's get you back home." He sounded tired, I noticed, like he just wanted to go to sleep.

"It's not really home," I muttered under my breath, straightening my dress. Harry had pulled down the corner and I was still worried I had the look of a whore-in-the-making.

We walked in silence to the orphanage and my face turned sour when I saw it at the end of the road. I hated it there, so so much. Everyone in there hated me and I hated everyone.

I slowed down unintentionally, trying to prolong my time in the quiet evening just a little longer.

Thomas noticed, glancing back at me and sighing.

"Daisy, it's been a long day. Come on now, I need to get you back so I can go to sleep myself."

I was being an inconvenience again.

"Sorry," I mumbled, shuffling forwards ahead of him quickly. "You don't have to walk me all the way back, it's just there. Thanks for dealing with Harry."

I rushed off in the direction of the orphanage when I heard him sigh again. "I didn't mean that. I'm just tired. I'll walk you back; come 'ere."

I paused, turning back around. "Honestly, it's fine. Go home."

"What were you doing kissing Harry Waller?"

The question came nonchalantly, as though we'd been talking about Harry and his question didn't come out of nowhere.

"I wasn't. He was kissing me and I was trying to get him off me."

"I know, I saw," he drawled quietly. "I meant what were you doing with him in the first place? He's a piece of work, that kid is."

I scoffed. "Yeah I noticed." I gestured to the cut on my lip and my head that I was sure would have a bald patch where Harry had ripped my hair out.

Thomas stayed quiet while I looked down at my feet. The question didn't mean to come out, but I said it anyway because otherwise I'd lie awake wondering what his answer would be.

"Am I a whore, Thomas? Or gonna be one?"

He blinked at me before taking a packet of cigarettes out of his coat pocket and lighting one slowly. He took two drags before he answered. "Is that what he said to you?"

I nodded. "It's probably true. I ain't gonna be anything worth anythin', am I? I'm nobody with nothin'. I'll have to start sleeping with old men just to live." I grimaced at the thought. I wasn't sure I could have sex with someone Joe's age. I didn't know much about sex, only what I'd heard around the teenagers on the street and the orphanage, but I did know it wasn't good for the girl. Even at twelve, I knew that sex was for the boys and the girls typically had to just lie there.

"Do you think you're a whore?"

I shrugged, feeling silly that I'd brought it up. I was just a kid and I didn't know anything about what I was talking about. I knew Thomas Shelby did. "Don't whores have to kiss loads of people? That was my first kiss, so I don't think I'm a whore yet…"

He took another drag, still watching me carefully. "Your first kiss was that kid?"

I paused before nodding. It didn't sound any better when it was said out loud compared to in my head. I supposed I could have kissed someone worse than Harry Waller - he had lots of friends and his family were really rich. He might have hit me and made me kiss him, but some boys had done worse things to some of the girls me and Ada saw. Some were black and blue with bruises, and some girls who were only a year or two older than me and Ada were pregnant. Not those who lived near Ada, mind, but the girls who lived on my street. The girls who were whores and washer women and lived under a roof with three times as many people as it was made for.

He finished his cigarette, threw it to the floor and strolled towards me. He only stopped when he was a step away from me and it was only then that I realised how tall he was and how much he had filled out since I was nine. He looked… well, he looked more like a man than a boy.

"Listen to me, Daisy Smith," he muttered quietly, as though he was worried anyone but me would hear his words, "boys like Harry Waller will always think they can walk all over girls like you who ain't rich. But they only do it if you let them. So if you don't wanna be a whore, Daisy, don't be a whore. Do whatever you want to do and anyone who says you can't can go fuck themselves. If you can tell me no when you were nine, you can tell people like him no, too. Ya hear?"

I took in a shaky breath and exhaled it as I looked away. His eyes were too intense, too bright, too examining. "I hear ya, Thomas."

He nodded before putting his hands in his waistcoat pockets. "It's Tommy. I'll see you soon, Daisy Smith."

As he walked away from me, he turned around and shouted back, "And if Harry or any other boy tries to kiss you if you don't wanna kiss them, you find me and tell me, and me and Arthur'll make sure nobody does it ever again."