She strides into Alfie's hovel - why does he still do his business here with the amount of money he's making? - with her head held high. She smiles blandly at the men who bid her a good morning and her eyes don't light up or even glow. Her small heels click against the ground, a rhythmic tapping that can alert everyone there of her arrival.
The best whore in England.
She's dressed in a drop-waist dress, a fashion she saw in Paris the previous month. 1920 was a beautiful year in Paris - they had started rebuilding in 1919 and the plants and flowers and crops and buildings were all starting to look like they should. The post-war buzz was so catchy - she'd danced a jazz in the clubs of Paris and she danced the same dances now in London with men who could afford to buy hundreds of these clubs. They pay her so handsomely, both in tender and with something that, to Alfie, was far more valuable than money: secrets.
She often reports back on the goings-on within the elitist circles on London to her good friend, her silent partner. He likes to keep tabs on people and what better way to do that than partnering with a small, waifish girl who nobody expects much of? Until they hear her name and they know - this is the woman who half of London would kill to be with and the other half hate for stealing their husbands from them. Nobody outside Alfie's organisation (but the first man she'd slept with for money) knows that her and Alfie are affiliated. Nobody would suspect. They all think her above such people; she almost snorts at the idea.
"Boss is in the office. Says he has a new friend who wants to meet you," Tiny says from the midst of the barrels as he sees her walking in.
She rolls her eyes. Of course he does; Alfie always had more plans in store for her, more people she had to fuck, more secrets she has to gather. Although, she thinks, it is strange that he is okay with being so openly attached to her. The friend must be special.
"Alfie is so lucky in his friends, don't you think Tiny? He has so many." She spins on her heels and continues walking backwards so she can grin saucily at Tiny. It's fake and they both know it. Everyone in this building has seen her pretend so many times that they can now all see what is real and what is not. Smiles are never real. She is an ice queen. The Ice Queen of London who everyone wants to melt.
She taps lightly on the door to his office before Alfie lets her through. She thinks to herself, I should make more of an effort with my introductions to potential customers - Alfie would like that more and maybe they'll stop trying to "make me happy", as a client had told her the week before. Besides, she thinks, he must be important. So she plasters a smile on her face, her perfectly rouged lips quirking up at one corner more than the other.
The smile falls when she walks into the room, and her breath comes short and her vision blurs.
She nearly falls down.
She nearly cries.
She nearly screams with sheer joy and disbelief.
Her mouth forms in a perfect 'o' as the men in the room turn to look at her and she can see his face from the front now rather than just his profile.
He is exactly the same yet so so different. His facial expression doesn't change but she sees - she always sees - his jaw click from him clenching his teeth.
"Tommy." It is a whisper, a breath, a prayer, from her lips.
Chaos erupts in the room.
"What the fuck is she doing here?"
"Get the fucking whore out of here!"
These come from Arthur Shelby and his brother John, who looks so much older than when Daisy saw him last. She remembers the way he used to play with her and Ada and indulge in their every whim; Arthur too.
Now they look furious to see that she's alive and well, breathing the same air as them - for some strange, strange reason, they despise her.
Tommy says nothing and she doesn't know whether to be elated or destroyed by this. Why isn't he happy to see her? The last time she'd seen him, six years ago, he'd whispered those beautiful words over and over in her ear, making her shiver with both pleasure and sheer unadulterated love.
She'd thought him dead and he is here - this is a miracle, she thinks elatedly, despite never being one for God or religion.
Ignoring the men who are still arguing and shouting around her - Alfie is up out of his chair and arguing back, his large frame taking up too much room in the office - she takes a few steps forwards, her usual elegance and poise forgotten as she stumbles, desperate for a touch of him.
He takes a step back and she thinks she can her her heart stop for a beat and break a little more than it was already broken.
She frowns in confusion - why won't he let her near him? He's been dead for years… she needs to touch him to make sure he's real…
He looks so dapper in his suit, his hands in his pockets so casually. He's always loved being casual, she thinks with an internal grin. But she notices something else too, a hardness to him that wasn't there before. His face used to be cool and collected but it's pure ice now. His eyes that used to shimmer with happiness when they looked at her were… indifferent. If it wasn't for the click in his jaw that she recognised, that's what she'd say he looks like - completely, heartbreakingly indifferent. To her.
In the end, her gaze is taken away from him when Alfie literally shoots a hole through the ceiling, breaking the plaster in a small corner and effectively silencing everyone in the office.
She blinks dazedly at Alfie, her mind still grasping onto the blissful chant of "he's alive, he's alive, he's here in this room with me, and alive…"
Alfie sits back down in his chair, runs a hand through his hair first and then his beard and looks around at us all.
"What the fuck is going on between you Blinders and Fleur?"
Arthur scoffs and runs his own hand through his hair to flatten and straighten it. "Is that what she's callin' 'erself now? A fancy French name, as though people don't know what she is - a dirty fuckin' whore."
He spits the words at her, looking her up and down in her fancy French dress with her fancy French name and finding her wanting.
"Fleur, what the fuck's goin' on?" Alfie says to her quietly, more baffled than she is by this turn of events. Clearly he had not brought Tommy here for her to please him - he never showed his face to customers. He doesn't know about her old lover, he doesn't know much about her at all now she thinks about it. Her closest confidant knows nothing - if that doesn't say much of her character, she thinks, nothing will.
"Why Fleur, Alfie?" she asked one day as they overlooked the docks. "What's wrong with Daisy?"
"You're my flower, Flower. And you need somethin' to separate who you are with who you're pretendin' to be."
"I like Daisy," she whispered into the cold air, not sure if he heard her. He used to like my name, would say it over and over. Daisy Smith. Daisy Smith.
Is that a challenge, Daisy Smith?
Her heart hurt.
"Fleur makes you sound like something these men can't get at any whorehouse in England. If we're gonna do this properly, you're gonna be making more than every other whore in the country put together. And you can't be doing that with a name like a little girl."
"Dais?" Alfie snaps her back to attention by using her real name. He does it so seldom these days.
"I don't know," she whispers back truthfully because if there's one thing in all the world that she certainly does not understand it's what is happening in this room right now.
John rolls his eyes and takes a threatening step towards her but he stops when Alfie stands up suddenly. "What the fuck is going on here?" He asks again, this time louder - Alfie never raises his voice.
Nobody answers him, but Tommy takes out a cigarette - my heart squeezes painfully - and starts smoking slowly. "This is who's gonna get me all of Sabini's secrets, eh?"
Frozen, comprehension dawning, she stares at him in disbelief. This man who she has loved more than she had ever thought possible... wants to pay her money to sleep with someone…else? With Sabini? The Italian man he speaks of is insane. Rich, but not nearly sane enough for her to willingly sleep with him. Especially now… she's not sure she can sleep with anyone else ever again now she knows he's alive. There is only one person she ever wants close to her again… and he's still staring at her as he puffs away, smoke billowing around him.
"Sabini? What…" She's not been this ineloquent since 1914. She needs to get it together.
When no one speaks to clarify anything for her, Alfie says, "Mr Shelby wants to hire you for… purposes other than…the usual." He says this slowly, as though trying to find the right words as he goes along. He doesn't understand what's going on, but the look in Daisy's eyes right now isn't something he wants to contribute to. She's been like marble for the last four years and this is the first time he's seen her looking so… emotional. He remembers the time he put forward the idea of sleeping with someone for money and she cried and screamed at him - since then, she's been stoic. Like a machine, just making them money, helping him build his criminal empire down here in London. He's not sure he likes this look on her face - she looks like she's floundering. Alfie can't afford to have his main source of income floundering.
"To sleep with someone else?" She asks the question but she already knows the answer. She knows how Tommy thinks - he wants to take over London. He's looking for Sabini's secrets and talking with Alfie Solomons. It could only be that one thing if he's talking to the two main crime lords in the heart of London. Tommy wants in on it. And he wants to hire 'Fleur' to help him.
"Shouldn't be too hard for ya. We hear you open your legs to anyone and anything these days." Arthur is so cold, and bitter and all she wants to know is why.
Why, if Tommy was alive, hadn't he come looking for her? Hadn't written to her? Why was Arthur acting as though she's single handedly started the War? Why was Tommy so indifferent towards her?
I think I've always loved you Dais…
"You were dead," she croaks, grasping onto the nearest table for support.
"Only to you, it seems," Tommy says back, staring right through her like she was a stranger.
"Not to me," she says so quietly, he doesn't hear her. He mustn't hear her, she thinks, because he doesn't say, "No, not to you" back. He doesn't say anything back. He just smokes and seems completely unaffected. She, on the other hand, has never been so affected in her life and it clearly shows.
What is it they call her, she thinks. Ah yes. The Ice Queen nobody can melt.
Tommy Shelby hasn't melted her, she thinks forlornly. He's smashed her into a million pieces.
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