She doesn't know what to think. Not after that. After that, she is through feeling guilty. She has just paid for her mistakes and shame with every happy memory of her life. With the past love and hope she'd once felt, the love that he had just torn to pieces right in front of her eyes.
How. Dare. He?
She's never had much in her life but what she does have, or did have, was the knowledge that for a year, maybe several if she counts the love she had for him since their first meeting, she had the love of a man who notoriously did not fall in love. She had loved, and been loved, and it was the only thing that kept her going through the harshness of the war years. And he's ruined it all with a few cruel words.
Tommy Shelby has always been harsh, but he's always been fair. That has changed tonight - he was not fair, or merciful or understanding on this night. He'd been cold. A pale sliver of the man he once was.
She spends the evening in her large bath in her penthouse suite. She runs it and re-runs it when it gets cold. By the time she leaves to go to bed, her skin is so prune-like she almost smiles. She doesn't though; she simply crawls into bed, naked, sits there, surrounded by lush pillows and elaborate furniture, and she cries.
The next time she sees him, they are at a up and coming night club in London centre. It is full of jazz music and the men and women dancing the new dances that rose from the hardships of war. They are full of life and joy, their faces smiling and laughing as they jump around, the feathers in the girls' headpieces swaying gently.
Daisy doesn't dance tonight. She sits on the lap of the owner in the back corner, smiling idly as he whispers sweet nothings in her ear. He speaks to her of how he knows she loves him because she always comes back. He's the only one who can make her come apart in the bedroom, he says. She doesn't say anything to encourage or discourage him, she just lets him say these things and grasp tightly around her small waist that has only gotten smaller in the last few weeks.
Tommy Shelby has ruined both her memories and her appetite, it seems.
When he walks into the bustling club, surrounded by his usual Blinders in their flat caps - a stark contrast the the glittering feathers on heads in this room - it's like her body instantly recognises that its counterpart is here; she looks over immediately and, by some coincidence, so does he.
His eyes go first to her face, then to the hands around her waist and then to the man she perches gently on, before snapping back to her eyes again. His expression is inscrutable. She is still mad and hurting from their last encounter - would she ever not be hurt by it? - so she just sneers slightly and turns away. She can't bear to look at him, especially not when she's with another man. Almost subconsciously, she pries Edward's hands from her waist and moves to sit on her own chair, facing away from the entrance.
She can't bear to see his judgement. Not after what he did. Not after what she's done.
"Are you alright, Fleur?" Edward asks from her side, his tone confused.
She throws him what she hopes is a comforting smile as she catches the nearest waiters eye and asks for another glass of champagne.
She doesn't register a man approaching Edward to lean down into his ear, and she certainly doesn't notice him nodding along.
"Do you mind me conducting some business quickly, my dear?"
She realises, a little slowly, that he is talking to her. She looks at him over her shoulder and shakes her head. "Not at all darling." Her voice is empty like her heart is, and she knows that he doesn't notice a single thing wrong when his face smiles back at her.
She doesn't look back again at him until she hears his voice, and then her head can't whip around fast enough.
"Mr Falcon," he says, his voice almost huffing the words as though he hates having to speak them.
"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage," she hears Edward reply, looking up at him with confusion.
She knows Tommy hates this. He's so used to his reputation proceeding him.
"Tommy Shelby." He announces it as proud as anybody with that name would, because although Edward doesn't know who he is, everybody north of Gloucester does. They know he is dangerous, they know the Peaky Blinders are not to be messed with. That was the case in 1914, and she has only heard tales of how the Blinders have moved up impossibly further. At the time, she hadn't bothered listening too much because it hurt her to even think of him; but now she knows Tommy is alive and surely at the head of the organisation, she tries to recall every little detail she's heard about them. They are deadly. They are smart. They are cunning.
People speak of "they" as though they are discussing the Blinders, but she knows they're inadvertently discussing him. She knows they are - she knows his intelligence and his thrill for his job… but unfortunately for Edward, he does not.
"Shelby… doesn't your brother Arthur lead that gang we've been hearing so much about? The Peaky Blinders?"
Daisy looks past Tommy to see Arthur behind him, rubbing frantically at his nose and breathing in deeply, not even paying attention.
No, she thinks. It is definitely Tommy leading this criminal gang.
Tommy doesn't dignify the question with an answer. "I 'ave a business proposition for you."
Edward sighs with tiredness, running his hands over his face. "I'm a little busy right now." he indicates towards me, his eyebrows rising to emphasise the meaning behind his words: I want to fuck her, leave so I can do so.
Tommy looks over at me blandly, looks me up and down again before glancing back to Edward. "She'll live."
She knows how easy it would be to cause a scene and demand that Edward give her his attention instead of Tommy. It would mean Tommy's proposition would go unheard and forgotten within minutes. She could stop one thread of his career in London with a simper and a meaningful look towards Edward.
She knows this for sure. She doesn't think Tommy does; doesn't think that he understands the power she holds down here. She is not Daisy Smith here, the little orphan girl who loved him in all the ways a girl can love a boy. Here, she is Fleur, the world class prostitute who makes men believe whatever they want to. She had all the power here… and she doesn't think Tommy knows it.
She knows that she could ruin him with a few visits to her "friends".
She also knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she would never do that. No matter what cruel things he says to her.
He broke her the week before, but still she remembers all the times he fixed her in the past. He could say the cruelest things to her, hurt her in a plethora of ways, and she would still never undermine him in this way.
So she turns to Edward and smiles, even though her heart is in her throat and she has to force the words out as casually as she can. "Don't worry about me, darling. I'll be upstairs."
She tries to stand up and saunter off casually, but her knees shake due to Tommy's closeness and she wobbles a little when she stands. Later, she'll talk herself out of what her eyes see, tell herself she imagined it, but when she wobbles on her heels, she sees Tommy flinch and reach a hand up - maybe a whole five inches - to steady her. It stops as soon as his brain registers that he hates her, and he returns to being stoic and resolute in his businessman mode.
She tells herself later that she didn't see it.
But Tommy did. He tells himself later than it didn't happen - nobody but him witnessed it surely - but he knows it did because it had taken a conscious effort to bring his hand back down. Like his body couldn't help but want to help hers.
Daisy sits upstairs on an uncomfortable, but expensive, chaise and smokes slowly as she waits for Edward. She doesn't know how tonight will play out - the last thing she wants to do is pretend she is Fleur and have sex. But she can't be Daisy right now… Daisy would want to run back downstairs and fling herself into Tommy's arms and beg him to love her again.
She is torn between her two personas, torn between who she is and who war has made her. She wonders if Tommy is too. Does he remember the fun they had? The laughter and the love? Can he remember the winter night she ran to his house in the early hours of the morning because it had snowed and the only person she'd wanted to see was him? Could he remember the snowball fight they'd had, him eventually winning and pinning her down into the snow and kissing her senseless as they laughed against each others lips? It had been just them in the bitter chill of the street in 1913. She hadn't cared about the cold wetness on her back, or the way her nose had turned to ice. All she cared about was Tommy's lips on hers and her hands around his neck as he kept her warm with his body`and his care and attention.
God, she'd loved him. And he'd loved her.
Did the man downstairs remember any of this? Had war tarnished every good memory of his? Had her actions?
And what of his actions? He'd not even let her know he was alive. Nor had Ada, or Polly. Why had nobody told her? She wouldn't have ever turned to this life if there was even the slightest chance that he was waiting for her. She would have waited for him for decades if she knew he was the prize at the end. She would never had sought out the company of other men, the warmth of their bodies in a pathetic imitation of him.
She has made a lot of mistakes. But so has he.
She needs to know. She needs to know what happened. She can't live this way, questioning everything, trying to assimilate the Tommy she knew to the Tommy downstairs.
And to do this, she can't be sleeping with other men.
So she leaves the room, ignoring his security when the large man asks her where she is going. She simply walks out of the back entrance, hails a cab and goes back to her cold, barren apartment. As soon as she garners the courage, she declares to herself, she will get the answers she desperately, desperately needs.
And she'll be damned if Tommy doesn't answer them.
Sorry for the slight filler chapter. The real confrontation, I suppose, is in the next chapter so this was a necessary step. Hope you're all still enjoying despite the somewhat doom and gloom thus far... ;)
Thanks for reading! Any comments are, as always, really appreciated and taken on board.