Hello, welcome to another story. This one is set post TRRH, in 1940 and doesn't really require you to have read TRRH before reading.

For anyone who hasn't read my story Family Dinner - Nancy Shelby is Tommy and Rosie (my OC from my main story Tommy's Red Right Hand)'s youngest daughter.

WARNING!

If you are unfamiliar with my work then please be warned that although I'm developing my own take on the Shelby family through my writing it's fairly canon compliant - which means my work in set in the 1900s and includes domestic abuse, bad language, prejudice and racism and physical parental discipline.

If any of that will upset you please do not proceed.

FEBRUARY 1940, ARROW HOUSE

Nancy Shelby had no fucking clue what she'd done so wrong in a past life to have meant she'd been born to parents who threw dinner parties. All the fucking time. They'd just about be finished the dessert of one and the next one would be planned. And they always, always, always meant trouble for her.

Sometimes they even meant trouble for other people too.

A couple of years ago - before the war - when Nancy'd been about four, they'd been having a family dinner party and Billy and Charlie had been ripping it right out of Ruby all night. Even their cousin Maria had got in on it - though Nancy reckoned that was only cause she knew she could get in on it, or she could be on the receiving end of it with Ruby.

Charlie was alright at times when Billy wasn't around and it was just them, but as soon as their cousin was there, her brother could be a right tosspot. And of course their Aunt Linda wouldn't hear a word against her precious Billy-boy, she thought the sun shone out of his arse. So when Ruby finally lost her temper and screamed a couple of the better words Jack and Katie had taught them at Billy and Charlie - and Nancy's unlucky sister had somehow managed to time her screaming for the one precise minute when the adults had all stopped talking and would notice what was getting said at their end of the room - there was no telling any of them that it wasn't Ruby's fault.

Their mother had gone very white, then very pink, her hair and face all merging, then crossed the whole length of the room in about half a second, grabbed Rubes and dragged her away, like how a dragon might drag a princess, kicking and screaming, to its layer.

Billy had been openly laughing at that point and Nancy had decided right then that she hated him.

She'd marched up to her father and done her best to tell him. "It wasn't Ruby's fault, Dad, it was his," she'd said, pointing right at Billy, feeling like the hero in the story, doing the right thing, pointing out the bad one in front of the whole village so the villain had nowhere to hide, "He's been being a right arsehole to her all night."

It had not helped.

Aunt Linda had let out a scoff and said all sarcastically, "Oh would you listen to that - of course it's Billy's fault that foul language is coming out of your lots' mouths!"

"Linda," Uncle Arthur had muttered, running a hand warily through his hair, twisting his head between Nancy's dad and her Aunt Linda.

"What?" Linda'd demanded, spinning to him and cocking her head, "Are you going to let them blame our boy for their filthy habits? It's not as if Billy hears words like that in our home, is it Arthur? Where would he be hearing them to be spreading them?"

Nancy hated her aunt too right then - because it was a fucking stupid thing to say. Everyone knew swear words and that was just the facts (or that was, everyone except the girls Nancy went to school with, she wasn't allowed to share them with them) - besides, what Nancy had been saying wasn't that Ruby had known the swear words to say because of Billy but that the fact she'd had to say them in the first place was Billy's fault. And no one was listening to her.

Feeling venomous, wishing she could bite Aunt Linda's silly neck like a snake, put her fangs in and release poison to make her shut her eyes never to open them again, Nancy had dragged her eyes from her aunt's figure and looked up at her father. It hadn't been reassuring - like he knew she was right and would do whatever he had to to ensure she and Ruby were vindicated - no, whatever bit of hope Nancy'd been holding onto disappeared as he looked down at her - extinguished by his blue eyes.

He'd been standing completely still, his steady, unblinking gaze fixed on her, and Nancy had simultaneously tried to say something and to swallow something, feeling like her knees might give way. There had been rushing, pounding silence, the sort of silence that had a current like a draining tub, the sort of silence that pulled you in rings into it, all discombobulated and sucked you under.

Then he had pointed his finger at her - and she'd flinched as if he'd branded her - and said, "I don't want to hear that word from your mouth again. If I do, I'll wash it out for you and you'll find yourself over my knee."

She'd never even been over his knee at that point - but it had still been utterly humiliating, to have him say that to her, right in front of everyone. Worse than if he'd even just dragged her out the room too after Ruby and their mother, cause at least then she wouldn't have needed to see Billy's smug face after.

But she had had to see his smug face, cause her father had turned and gone after her mother and sister, then Lily had gone after him, and then Lily had come back in and fetched Charlie and Nancy had been left to face all her cousins and aunts and uncles on her own whilst everyone else had gone and had it out.

Ruby hadn't come back to that particular dinner party, and once Billy had gone, it had taken ages before she'd speak to Charlie properly again, no matter how many times he said he was sorry. He'd gone to the shop a million times and bought her chocolate and ribbons and notecards and all sorts and she hadn't budged, had thrown his offerings into the corridor - where Nancy had pilfered the edible ones.

Ruby didn't get in trouble very much - not proper trouble - and she held a grudge like no one, did Ruby. You had to think very seriously about whether pissing Ruby off was worth it if there was any chance you were going to need her help with anything in the next few weeks.

So yeah, dinner parties were cursed, if even Ruby could find herself in trouble cause of them - ergo, Nancy had decided, quite simply, she just wasn't going to this one tonight.

She was skipping it.

Well - actually - her mother had decided she wasn't going to it tonight. After the drama of the one they'd had just before Christmas - when Ruby's soup had ended up all down her and somehow it had been Nancy's fault - her mother had decided Nancy had 'quite proven' that she 'wasn't grown up enough to conduct herself' at a dinner party and she was going to be eating her dinner in her room that night.

And that would have been grand.

But her father had to spoil it.

She'd be eating dinner in her room alright, but there was a drinks reception at six o'clock in the big room, and she was to be at that to be paraded alongside Ruby and Charlie to all her dad's colleagues - to show them all that Thomas Shelby presided over the perfect family at home and therefore was the man for the job to preside over everything else. Nancy didn't know what presided meant, but that was what her mother had said anyway.

So despite the fact it was a Saturday, she was supposed to make sure she was back inside by four o'clock so Frances could get her scrubbed and brushed and funnelled into some god-awful dress that Lily would have picked for her that would be itchy and uncomfortable.

Well, they'd see about that.