Chapter 98

Lily had a bit of a tantrum about getting up and going to church that morning, which was unusual. She did often sleep later than the adults, but she wasn't typically bad at rising in the morning and, whilst Tommy wasn't remotely convinced that Lily enjoyed church for any God related reasons, she enjoyed going in that she was always allowed to wear her slightly smarter dresses – though once she was eventually up that morning, the yellow dress she had been forced to scrub at the washhouse earlier in the week was dutifully ignored in favour of her old church dress.

"Look at how much you've grown, eh?" Rosie said, in an attempt to cheer the child up, "We're going to need to add something to the bottom of that dress soon because you're getting so tall, aren't we?"

Calling her tall was a bit of an exaggeration (thankfully so, as far as Tommy was concerned) but it didn't matter because the child would not be cheered. Following the tears and shouting of the morning, which he had been shoo-ed off from bringing to an easy stop with his usual threat, told to just wait downstairs and Rosie would stop it (which she had eventually, just far later down the line than he would have got it stopped had he had his way!) Lily was silent and miserable not even finding a smile for him when he called her his best girl and took her up to rest on his hip, jiggling her as he paced from the kitchen to the front room and back, waiting for Polly's usual prompt appearance.

After lunch, the child wandered mournfully off out the back, leaving her crusts as if the hard bit of the bread was just too much effort for her mouth to chew, having already taken an age to eat the soft pieces of her sandwiches, whilst Finn had wolfed them down and shot back outside to enjoy his last day of freedom by the time she was finished chewing and swallowing her first bite.

"Do you think she'll buck herself up anytime soon?" Tommy growled in annoyance, lighting a cigarette, "She's seven now – too old for this carry on."

If he was honest, it wasn't so much an annoyance with the child as it was an annoyance that nothing he was saying or doing was bucking her up.

"Ah you were seven and going back to school the next day once too," Rosie said lightly, picking up his empty plate from in front of him and kissing his wrinkled forehead.

"Aye – but I wasn't acting like that about it, was I?"

"Cause you were so desperate to get back to it?" Rosie replied, raising an eyebrow at him from over by the sink.

"Cause I'd have had my arse tanned if I threw tantrums like she did this morning then moped around all day like the world was on my bloody shoulders."

"Well I'm sure your lack of being allowed to express yourself as a child would explain why you're such a grumpy old man who goes all silent and sullen himself when he's not pleased."

"That your theory?"

"Uhuh."

"I believe the expression is children should be seen and not heard – not children should express themselves."

"The expression can be what it is, but I'm not having her brought up to be scared to show her emotions."

He snorted derisively, "It's not about being scared to show them, it's about keeping them in check and behaving herself."

"She's a child Thomas," Rosie said, turning and putting her hands on her hips, "She's not been cheeky, she's just been upset, alright? If I wanted to listen to this nonsense way of thinking I'd have kept Molly around."

He opened his mouth to protest, insulted at what she was insinuating, then clamped it shut around his cigarette, stood up and went into the front room.

"Oh go on and sulk in the front room then! One fucking tantrum deserves another!" Rosie shouted after him, her annoyance clear in her tone.

"Don't push me, woman!" Tommy snapped back, sitting heavily down on the sofa and inhaling deeply.

God but the two Jacksons could be irritating at times! He never regretted bringing them into his life – though he harboured guilt and regret about what his life was and how that affected them – but there were times he'd happily have wrung both sisters' necks.

They had an early dinner that night, since Rosie had decided Lily should have an extra bath for going back to school – and it was after dinner, when he was back on the sofa, where he'd spent most of the day, him and Rosie exchanging only snippy sentences with one another, when his annoyance finally was ousted entirely.

"Are you ready for going back tomorrow? I've laid out all your things on top of the chest so we'll have an easy morning, eh?" he heard the redhead say to the child.

"Finn walk with us?" Lily asked in return, her voice still devoid of all her usual happiness and light.

"I don't know sweetheart," Rosie told her, "Finn might be walking himself this year now that he's turned twelve. You'll need to ask Tommy."

"You're going to work?"

"Yes, but I'll walk you to school first and see you in then I'll go to my job and Tommy or Aunt Polly will pick you up afterwards, just like it was last year except you'll maybe walk straight home instead of onto the big school for me, eh?"

"Do you have to go?"

"I want to go Lily, I want to do something important, something that helps."

The child sighed.

"Now, speaking of what helps, Lily…" Rosie said, and trailed off as if she was expecting Lily to respond, which the child didn't, as far as he could hear – though he could well imagine a facial response happening.

"You're happy here, aren't you?" he heard Rosie push on, though he could hear the strain in her voice, as if she didn't want to be pushing on.

"Good," she continued, "But you understand how things are Lily, don't you? If you want to stay here with me and Tommy and Finn – you can't talk about it in school."

"I know," Lily sighed, her voice tiny.

Tommy swallowed the lump that was coming up in his own throat. It was a heavy conversation for him to overhear, he could hardly begin to imagine how heavy a conversation it was to be part of – and for Lily, for a baby, to be part of…

"I know it's difficult, sweetheart. But not long now, eh? A year and a bit and you'll be mine, officially, eh? And once I'm eighteen and we have that piece of paper saying you belong to me no one can take you it'll all be fine, all be safe – but until we have that, until I'm eighteen, Lily, you have to make sure no one realises we're not with Molly, alright? You understand, don't you?"

There was again no verbal response that he could hear but he presumed the child nodded, because Rosie, sounding like she was choking down tears, a false brightness in her tone that he hated to hear, said, "Good girl. Now, shall we get you dried off and in front of the fire, hmm?"

Tommy hadn't started the fire yet and he busied himself with doing it before Lily was brought back down in her night dress, her wet hair brushed out.

"I'm going to have my bath now – you two will manage for twenty minutes or so?" Rosie asked, raising an eyebrow at him, evidently expecting him to still be in a bad mood.

He stood and drew her to him, kissing her forehead and squeezing her shoulders.

She smiled up at him, understanding, their nippiness of the day gone without them needing to discuss it.

"I'll give you a hand bringing in the fresh water," he told her, letting go and making to walk through to the kitchen.

"Ah it doesn't matter, I'll use the leftover from Lily's, she wasn't too dirty," Rosie said, following him.

He ignored her, picked up the full tub and tossed the contents of it out the backdoor.

"Tommy!" she scolded him, "What a waste."

"You'll have fresh water for your bath, brought in by me, until such times as I get you a plumbed in version, alright?" he told her, chucking her under the chin.

"You can have tantrums more often Mr Shelby, if this is the kind of promise I get in return for putting up with them," she replied softly, seeing through his bravado.

He put his hands on her face and kissed her deeply. Trying, with his kiss to convey all his apologies. All his apologies for not understanding that the schools going back the next day wasn't simply the generic end of summer holidays sadness that every kid in Small Heath would be going through right then, but that it was the end of a period of not worrying for both the Jackson sisters. A period of time where there had been freedom and no second guessing what people were thinking or whether they were going to act upon what those thoughts might be – whether there was going to be a knock at the door and a policeman asking to know what the hell was going on and where the child's mother was.

"I love you," he told her, wishing as always that his voice wasn't the harsh Birmingham growl that it was, wishing he could say it as softly and richly and indulgently as he meant to say it.

"I love you too," she told him.

It was funny, how she was a girl from Birmingham – from the same sorry streets as him – and yet her voice was fucking beautiful to his ears. Sweet and melodic. Even when she gave those biting, frosty, one word responses, even when she was clearly shutting down questions from other people, her voice never sounded as gruff and harsh as his did.

He brought in plenty of water to fill her tub, setting it into pots and pans on the hob, leaving her to warm it and gather her toiletries and her ridiculous washing line and sheet contraption that she hung around the kitchen whilst she was bathing.

"'Slike being in a tent when you've got all this rigged up," he told her, sitting on a chair and watching her climb up on another one to pin the line on the other side of the room.

"I've never been in a tent," she told him.

"My grandmother was born in one," he told her, "Spent some time in one myself. Medical tent. After a tunnel I was in collapsed and me and some others had to dig ourselves out."

She paused and looked at him for a moment before saying, carefully, "You never really talk about it."

He cleared his throat, "Before you, I'd think about it anytime I wasn't forcing myself not to. And when I slept and I couldn't make myself think on business, my mind went to it. I'd lie in bed and hear the shovels. But my mind is better occupied now. I shut the door and it stays behind it."

"I don't know that that's healthy Tommy," she said quietly, "Shutting a door and pretending it isn't there isn't the same as actually getting it out your house you know – it's just hiding in in a cupboard."

He lit a cigarette, inhaled, thought and nodded, "Maybe. Maybe you're right. You probably are…" he trailed off, exhaled and inhaled a few more times, then began twirling the cigarette in his fingers, concentrating on the burning end of it, before he continued, "See – if someone said sorry for us going through it, I'd say don't be sorry, it's all I can do now. I don't know, Rosie my love, what or who I'd be without it now. It changed parts of me. And parts of me it didn't change exactly but it grew them into parts of me they might not have ever grown to the size of otherwise. If I did get it out the house completely, I don't know what would be left. But there are parts it has nothing to do with. Parts that were always there, that it didn't kill or grow. And clawing my way out, through mud and dirt, I always had that. You understand?"

She looked at him for a while, still standing very still on the chair, the white sheet behind her, reminding him of the way a nurse's face had appeared to him as she hovered over his bed in that tent, nothing but canvas behind her. But she didn't talk like the nurse, or touch him, or give him any pitying looks. She just nodded.

She understood. No matter what collapsed, he would get them out.

"I'm going to go through and sit with the baby whilst you bathe, alright?" he said, standing up and sticking his cigarette in his mouth, crossing to offer her his hand to help her down off her chair.

"She's seven you know – if it's too old for tantrums, it's too old to be the baby," Rosie told him, mustering a smirk.

He shook his head, kissed her forehead and left her to her bath, going to the baby in question. The baby who would always be his baby as far as he was concerned – even when she was married with a baby of her own.

"Tommy," she said, turning to look at him from her spot in front of the fire.

"What is it sweetheart?" he asked, flicking his cigarette off in the ashtray and leaving it to rest there, coming to sit by her on the floor, hitching his suit trousers up to give him more movement to do so, feeling the creak in his knees and back as he got down.

God, he was spending too much time at home eating home cooked meals and not enough out being active if this was how his body was responding to getting down on the floor these days.

"Tommy, you're kind of like my Daddy, aren't you?" she asked with a frown.

He stretched out his legs, threaded his arms around her waist and pulled her onto his lap, kissing her wet hair and telling her, "Yup. I promised you didn't I? My hands are yours, for all of my days. Whatever you need, I'll get it for you. That's like I'm your Daddy. I told Johnny Dogs you were my daughter, didn't I? I said you were one of the Shelby kids, didn't I? Doesn't matter what your name is, your mine and I'm yours, eh?"

"But why can't you be my Daddy properly?" she asked despondently.

He sighed and kissed her again, rocking her to him, "Cause that's not the hand life dealt you or me, my little love."

"I wish it was," she told him, petting her lip.

"Me too sweetheart, me too," he murmured.

"Rosie says when she's eighteen she can adopt me properly."

"Uhuh."

"If she does that and you get married, would that mean you adopted me too?"

"I suppose it would."

"Are you going to get married?"

"I hope so. If she'll have me, eh?"

"I'll marry you if she doesn't," Lily told him decidedly.

"Is that right?" he grinned.

"Uhuh," she nodded.

"That's good of you, eh? Means I won't end up a lonely old man."

She snuggled in against his chest and sighed, her forehead not quite uncreasing.

Rosie's forehead was more than creased as she sobbed into him on the stairs later. She'd put Lily to bed and seemed to take a while to come back, so he'd gone in search of her, only to find her sitting there, her head against the wall, tears streaming silently down her face.

"It'll be alright," he tried to soothe.

"What if it's not? What if she says the wrong thing to the wrong person?" she choked and sobbed, taking ages to get her words out as she struggled to breathe properly, "Fuck, Tommy – this summer, it's been six weeks of not needing to worry about it. Nearly two months of peace and seeing her grow and talk and play and now I'm asking her to retract herself in again. It's not right."

"It's not fair," he told her, stroking her hair, "Not fair on either of you. But it's what's right if it's what keeps you two together, keeps her with us, eh?"

"But what if, Tommy? What if it's all for nothing? What if someone gets wind of it?"

"It won't matter. I won't let anyone take her, ever. You hear? Not even if we do need to get in a vardo and go live in tents to keep her ours."

Rosie tried to laugh, but it was more of a cough, "We'd be breaking the law, Tommy."

"Ah, well, I'm Gypsy, eh? Never gave much importance to the law of the settled folk."

She mustered a watery eyed smile, "That your excuse, eh?"

"Aye, 'tis," he nodded, "And being Gypsy – that's why kin means everything, my little loli phabai. So if there's something you can always trust, it's that no one interferes with my family unless it's over my dead body."

She nodded, leaning against him, then whispered, "Ada went willingly, Tommy."

He nodded, "I suppose I know that."

But he was a Gypsy. Kin was everything and he couldn't find it in him yet to forgive Freddie, not truly. But he was going to get Ada back on his side. He had a plan forming. And it all hinged on his heritage.

"On my mother's side, we are kin," he told Queen Mary Lee on Tuesday afternoon, when Johnny got him his audience with the woman.

She was a smart woman. And he could sense she had a streak of ruthlessness about her, one like his own, one like he sometimes thought he saw glimpses of in Rosie whenever she was getting ready to defend her family. He could see why the Lees had elected to accept a Queen in her rather than push for a King, as was usual.

She stared at him, unblinking, knowing he was there to strike a bargain.

"Let us talk family business."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"Put that down and get your cardigan, we're going out," he told Rosie on Friday as she sat in the kitchen, her pen scribbling over a ledger, Arthur's scrawls on the page next to her to translate.

"I'm working Tommy, you do pay me based on me doing this you know," she said, not stopping or closing her book.

"I'm your boss," he told her, leaning over her and plucking the pen from her hand, "Come along and do as you're told before I need to discipline you for insubordination."

"Sounds rather enjoyable, sir," she said, tilting her head back to look up at him.

He raised an eyebrow and tutted, "It's ten o'clock and the shop's busy, full of staff and customers, you behave yourself and get your cardigan or wrap or whatever the fuck it is you women wear these days when you've not got proper coats on."

She rolled her eyes but stood and went through the green doors, reappearing with a cardigan over her dress.

"Happy?" she demanded.

He swept his eyes up and down her before saying, "Swap those shoes for boots, it's going to be muddy where we're going."

She sighed repeated her journey, muttering about why he couldn't have said that the first time she went.

"Will I do now?"

"You'll do, come on," he said, turning on his heel to lead the way out the house.

"Where are we going Tommy?"

"Got someone I want you to meet."