Chapter 49

His hand hurt by the time the door gave way to his hammering. Polly ignored him initially, flashing her eyes up and down the street to see if anyone had taken note of him before sweeping the all seeing things up and down him and raising an eyebrow by way of greeting.

"She in there?" he asked.

"She's upstairs. But she doesn't want to see you."

"Polly…" he trailed off, ducked his eyes and inhaled on his cigarette.

His aunt sighed and stood back, creating some space in the doorway for him, nodding her head in the direction of her front room. It was more or less exactly the same as the Shelby's own. Even the floral patterned wallpaper was the same, he didn't remember ever noticing it before. But then, he'd never spent quite so much time in his own front room before as he had done lately. He imagined Polly and his mother had done their rooms at the same time. The bloody wallpaper had probably been stolen in bulk.

Polly shut the door firmly behind him - she had had her own kids taken off of her after a neighbour had seen some stolen sheets (obviously stolen - embroidered with the name of the hotel they'd originally been from) hanging on a washing line and had sent the police to her door in a fit of jealousy. Polly had learned her lesson the painful way. She was forever aware of people watching. She didn't have conversations in the street.

"Thomas, you don't need to do anything, I said I'd deal with it," she said, tuning to face him.

He shook his head and took another drag on his cigarette, letting it dangle from his mouth as he said, "It's not just the pregnancy Polly."

She raised her eyebrows, telling him to go on.

"Look, Rosie saw Ada on Tuesday. Just after I did. I don't know what was said, aside from Ada calling her my fucking lapdog, but Rosie hasn't been the same since she came home that night."

The corners of Polly' mouth turned up, "That's our Ada, isn't it?"

He gave her the look to explain this time.

"God Tommy, you brought her up!" his aunt said, shaking her head as if she didn't understand his confusion.

"Yeah - not to be a fucking bitch," he replied.

His aunt scoffed, "You've always painted Ada in this soft light in your head Tommy. But she's just you in a different form. Whenever she's scared or upset she lashes out - she always has done."

He exhaled a stream of smoke, "She's never lashed out at me."

"Yeah, because she's not an idiot," Polly replied, rolling her eyes, "Ada's always known how to work people - she gets that from you too. I'll give you it that she can be a bit silly at times, but if you watch her with the girls she's friendly with, she's the one in charge. She manipulates everyone around her - and she figures out quickly how much she can get away with. Anytime she was upset with you when she was a child, even before your mother died, it was Finn or John that got it, because she knew who she could get away with doling it out to. You think about it - how many times did you threaten to redden her backside for her and how many times did you go through with it? Every time you came down on her properly it was well overdue. She always knew how to dance around your boundaries, how to push you - you don't hesitate with Finn."

"Aye, cause I know how a boy's mind works," he said, displeased at the insinuation he was soft.

"You know fine well how Ada's mind works too, you just don't want to admit it to yourself. She's upset, she's scared and she's jealous and alone, and she's got her dagger right in where it'll wound the most. Just like you would."

"If Ada's got wounding to do," he said, pointing with his cigarette in the direction of the door that led to the stairs, "Then let her come down here and wound me."

Polly scoffed, "As if! She loves you too much Tommy. It's you she thinks she's let down! Where do you think this fascination with Freddie even came from back in the beginning? From the fact he was your best friend. She idolises you, though god knows she won't admit it."

"So she rips Rosie away from me?"

His aunt raked her eyes over him for a minute before asking, "So are we done playing this game where we all pretend there's nothing going on between the two of you?"

"Well there isn't anything now, Ada's seen to that with whatever poisonous little words she's spouted."

"Tommy, Ada's on her own. She doesn't know where Freddie is. It hurts her to see you and that girl together right in front of her when she doesn't have that. And it hurts her that the one person you picked is the one person she can't manipulate. She never could fathom out Rosie Jackson, even before you brought her home."

That made two of them.

"She wants someone with that loyalty to her. Freddie was loyal to you. And she picked him partly for that loyalty. And he's left her, even if it was because of the raids and even if he doesn't know about the child, as far as her mind is concerned, he's left her alone. And as for Rosie and Ada, they have their own…" she trailed off, waving her hand around, searching for the word before settling on, "Their own dynamic. And she wants to think Rosie is her friend - but she knows that if it came to it, that girl would pick you over anyone else every time. She's trying to live up to you, to be like you - but even when she picks the same people you do, she doesn't quite manage it. She'll always be second to you."

His aunt drew breath, lighting a cigarette of her own before sighing at his disbelieving face and continuing, "Tommy, all any woman - any human, any normal human - wants is to be the most important person to someone, to be picked by someone, especially if they're used to not being picked. Ada wants someone to pick her over you and until she can find that, she'll be unhappy to see anyone else with the equivalent. She's never been good at sharing or doing without - even as a kid. Do you remember when that girl a few streets over got the ballet doll Ada wanted before she did? Ada set its hair on fire rather than see someone with it. I think you did actually have her over that, or was it your mother, I don't remember."

"Me," Tommy said.

He could well remember it - remember how smug Ada had seemed that afternoon after she'd come in from playing and how the look on her face had changed and her eyes had met his, wide and sure of a sealed fate, when Polly had opened the door and her friend's mother's voice had reached the kitchen. They hadn't known what she was saying, but Tommy knew Ada more than had the jist of it when Polly had shouted through to him that he'd better come to the door and Ada had made a dash to get out the back. He'd caught her by the scruff of the neck and pushed her into a chair, telling her if she wasn't sitting there when he came back she wouldn't sit at all - for a month. She'd been slightly older than Lily was now, about seven - maybe pushing eight.

"She does what you do Tommy, she sees people with things she doesn't have and she wants them - but if she doesn't know what to do to get them, if she can't just steal them or take them, she makes herself feel better by making sure if she can't have what she wants then no one else can have it either. She's just doing the same thing now. She's lashing out because she's going without - and because she's gone and landed herself in this situation and she doesn't know what to do."

He scoffed and shook his head, "Ada's not like that. She's - she's too damn cheeky for her own good and a bit too aware of it that people outside of this family don't stand up to her because she's a Shelby. But she's not - she's not spiteful, Polly."

"Yes she is Tommy! Where did her poisonous little words come from otherwise? God, it'll never cease to amaze me how you can be so perceptive about some things and so blind to what's under your nose. Ada's no angel. I love her, like she was my own daughter, but she's a spiteful little bitch sometimes. She's a Shelby, Thomas, same as the rest of us. We've all got our demons and we can all be fucking demons. You and Ada more than most. It's in our blood. We shake hands with devils and we walk past them. Ada's just in its grip and hasn't been able to move her feet yet."

"You're wrong Polly," he told her, shaking his head. Unsure if he believed his own protestations. "Or she's wrong, if you're right in that that's what she believes. I can't speak for Freddie, and I won't because he's not worth the fucking breath, but Rosie raked me over the fucking coals last night. Said I haven't even been to see Ada, haven't asked her how she is."

"She's right."

"Yeah - she's right. She's not picked me though, she's picked Ada. Says I can't lay a finger on her until I make this right with Ada."

"So that's why you're here then," Ada's voice came from the doorway, causing his head to jerk to look at her, "Not for me. Not because you give a shit about me. But because Rosie won't let you near her until you talk to me."

He stared at her, trying to see his baby sister the way Polly had described her, as being like him. But he couldn't. She wasn't like him. He didn't believe it of her. That she could be spiteful when provoked? He didn't want to admit to seeing that in her, but he could hardly argue with it when he was standing in Polly's living room partly because of that. But not the rest of it.

He let out a sigh - admitting that it was Rosie's words that had tipped him over into making the journey to face her probably wasn't the way to go.

"Ada - that's not what I said."

"Yeah it was."

"Well, it's not what I meant," he snapped, annoyed at her pointing out the truth and not just accepting his words.

And it wasn't what he'd meant, not really. He had wanted to see her anyway. But he'd been too ashamed to see her, too ashamed of himself to see what he'd let happen. It was only that, when he hadn't known what to do about Ada or Rosie or any of it, when he couldn't make sense of it or make a path, Rosie's accusations about what he hadn't done - that he hadn't been to see Ada, hadn't asked her how she was or what she wanted to do - those were things he could still do. It had given him a list of things he could do. There was so much, obviously, that he hadn't done that had led to this happening. But it had happened now - Ada had Freddie's baby in her and it was too late to do whatever it was he could have done to stop it. But see her. Ask how she was. They were things that were still in his power to do.

"What did you mean then Tommy?" she snapped right back at him.

"Ada - I…" he threw his hands up, "How are you?"

"Are you for fucking real?" his sister asked him.

His anger flared. Well, he had come to see her. He had asked her how she was. He had made the effort.

"Get out of here Tommy," his sister told him, looking him up and down, "Don't come here and pretend you care about how I feel, about whether I'm ok or not. Be more fucking truthful than that at least."

"Try harder than that Thomas," Rosie had said to him when he'd lied to her about not remembering when he had first paid her rent, "Try, for once, to tell me the truth."

Anytime he didn't tell any of them the truth it was to protect them. To try and not hurt them. And he was being vilified for it.

There were plenty of people he lied to. People he was prepared to double cross. Hell, wasn't he setting it up so he could take Grace to the races so he could lie to her, feed her information he wanted her to have? He didn't deny that he could be a liar - though admittedly he was more comfortable just keeping his mouth shut and letting people jump to their own, wrong, conclusions. But he didn't care about those people. That was a different type of lying, they were a different type of people.

Rosie and Ada were his family. His brothers and John's kids and Lily. Anything he hid from them or lied to them about - whether it was stolen guns or having paid something for them, if he lied to them it was for the right reasons. That had to make it ok, didn't it? That excused it? Not wanting to hurt people. Lying so as not to hurt people.

"I don't know what you want to hear, Ada. You want the truth? I want you to be ok, there's the truth. That's the easy truth. The hard truth is facing the fact you're not okay. I don't need to be here or ask you how you are to know you're not okay."

"Well unless you've got any great ideas on how to change that you should just go," Ada told him, her voice bitter.

"Don't backtalk me Ada," he told her, almost instinctively.

She looked to Polly and shook her head, rolling her eyes as if in disbelief at his words. As if she thought she was pregnant and therefore an adult who could act as she pleased. Well, she wasn't. And he'd remind her of that.

"How do you become ok? In my view - you get rid of that thing in your belly," he gestured at her middle, unable to hide his distaste for what lay in it, what of Freddie's lay in it.

He felt like he could see it suddenly, even through her dress and her robe, like the thing was right there, even though to look at her she didn't look at all pregnant. More bloated. Slightly swollen. But not like she was with child. And yet he could practically see the thing lying on its side in her, a generic baby face but with Freddie's eyes looking back at him.

"You go with Polly to one of these women," he told her, "You get rid of it. You stop this nonsense. You forget about Freddie Thorne, like I already told you to and you come home."

"That simple, eh Tommy?" she said, her tone sarcastic and still unacceptable as far as he was concerned.

"I'm not pretending anything's simple Ada," he flared, "But that would be a hell of a lot simpler than the reality of you bringing a baby into this world when its father isn't around - when its father is a wanted man who's always on the run and avoiding the noose."

"And it would be a hell of a lot simpler if I would just come home and Rosie would talk to you again, eh?"

"I don't know why you had to upset her Ada, she's picked a side and it's fucking yours."

"As if! How can she be on my side, Tommy, when she runs to you with everything?

"What are you on about?"

"She's your lapdog! She ran to you the minute you came back on Saturday after the fayre to tell you I hadn't been home. She didn't care that I was upset or anything, she just gave me a fucking telling off then ran to you the minute you were back!"

"Well maybe you needed a fucking telling off, Ada. And Polly told me about you not being at home," he seethed.

He hadn't said to Ada that Rosie had told him. Though he hadn't said who had told him, in order to insinuate who hadn't told her either. God, he'd promised Rosie if she trusted him, came to him, that he'd keep her out of it. And he'd failed her.

"Don't lie to me Tommy! She's already admitted she told you!"

So that had been part of their conversation.

"Polly had already told me before she did. Do you not understand that people were worried about you? And clearly with good reason!"

Ada's eyes went accusingly to their aunt for a minute, before she turned her glare back on him, "Just get out Tommy."

He clicked his tongue, "Well Polly, I think it's clear you're wrong. She doesn't give a fuck that she's bringing a baby into the world alone. I come here, try and be here for her, and she tells me to get out."

"Oh for god's sake, Tommy!" his aunt snapped.

"You want to keep Freddie's bastard Ada? You want it? You go ahead and fucking have it!" he shouted, his frustration and anger, and hatred of Freddie and that baby that was in his sister, trying to ruin her life, that baby with Freddie's eyes brimming over, "But don't you dare think you're bringing it into my house. I warned you, Ada... Polly says you want someone to pick you? I picked you! I picked you when mum died and dad had left. I picked you when I went into the family business and decided to make it something, rather than going and doing what I wanted to do! I picked the thing I knew would provide for you. And I didn't just pick you - and Finn - over my own fucking freedom, my own fucking life. I picked you over him. Freddie was my best friend Ada! Mine! And I saw the path he was going down with his communist dreams and I saw what the reality was here and I picked you. I picked our family over my friendship, Ada! I made it so that him and his like wouldn't be near us, wouldn't be a danger to us. I have picked you every fucking day of your fucking life Ada, from the minute you were born. I dragged this family up because I picked you, I have revolved my life around picking you! I picked you Ada. But that isn't enough for you, is it? That doesn't fucking satisfy you because you need more than just me. You need the whole fucking world revolving around you because you're a selfish, entitled little bitch!"

His sister had begun to sob by then, but he didn't care. He was too angry. He strode to the door, just as she let out a particularly large cry. He was too riled for it to win her any sympathy. It only worked him up further. She was crying. She was the one who had done this. And she had left the house. And she had upset Rosie. And she was crying? He thought about Rosie's broken sobs from the other night, thought about her biting into her pillow to muffle them - whilst his sister created these situations of her own accord then stood and cried openly about them. He whirled around and strode to where she stood. Not giving a damn for her state.

"I picked you Ada, and this is how you repay me? The one fucking time I picked something for myself, not considering anyone else but me, the one fucking time," his hands went to her shoulders and he began to shake her, violently, "I have already given up everything for you, Ada. She was it. The only thing I picked for myself, the only thing I wanted in my life. And you ruin it for me, you get your poisonous little words in and you ruin it."

"Tommy! Tommy stop it!" Polly was shouting, at the same time as Ada was pleading, "I'm sorry - Tommy - I'm sorry - please!"

But though he registered the women he registered them somewhere in his mind as sounds he would come back to and process later. Like he was hearing them speak in a foreign tongue that he had to translate.

"I don't know who you are, Ada," he told her, "I don't know when you became this spiteful, selfish, stupid little pregnant bitch!"

He released his right hand's hold on her then, so he could swing it back with every intention of bring it down, hard, upon her face, but his wrist was caught by Polly. She couldn't quite stop him, but she slowed his movements, grappled with him.

He turned to look at the older woman, her touch bringing him back slightly into the room, the roar of temper in his ears quieting slightly.

"You get your hands off of her Thomas Shelby, before you do something you'll regret," she told him, her voice deadly calm even as she struggled to restrain him.

"Pity you weren't there to say that to Freddie," he spat at her, not quite ready to retreat yet.

Polly pulled a revolver out and cocked it at him, the click silencing what was still going on in his mind and bringing him, finally, back into the room, into the reality of what he was going.

What the fuck had he done? What had he said?

He yanked his left hand off of Ada, holding it up alongside his right, his palms outwards in surrender, then took a few steps backwards before turning and seeing himself out of Polly's front door, listening all the while to Ada's cries.

He couldn't believe what he had done. Couldn't believe he'd lost control like that with her.

He was an illegal bookmaker. He was a thief. He was a violent petty criminal. He was a gangster. He had killed men, on the fields of France and in the backstreets of Small Heath. He had blinded more. Cut more. Taken tongues, eyes, fingers. He was Thomas fucking Shelby.

But that morning, he had violated his own unwritten code.

He headed into his own patch of Watery Lane through the shop door, seeing Lily sitting at his desk through the glass pane on his office. His heart thumped at the serious look on her face, wondering what she had to say to him.

He pushed open the door, keeping his voice as neutral as he could so he didn't betray himself, betray his worry, as he asked, "And what precisely are you doing in here?"

"Pretending to be a shop-keeper," she said, the serious look replaced with a smile upon sight of him.

He felt his body unclench a little, "A shop-keeper, eh?"

"Well that's what you do isn't it Tommy? This is your shop?" she gestured at the shop outside the office.

He smiled, crossed to the chair behind the desk, pulled it - and her with it - out and lifted her up into his arms.

"Polly's told you plenty of times you're not allowed in here when the shop's open, you're lucky it's me that came in and caught you, eh?" he said, chucking her under the chin, revelling in the giggle she rewarded him with.

At least someone was talking to him.

"John let me in," she told him.

"Is that right?"

"Uhuh."

"Where is Johnny boy?"

"In the kitchen."

"Eating again?"

"Yup."

"Your sister's going to need to put John on a ration book."

Lily laughed, not knowing what a ration book was, he was sure, but knowing he'd made a joke of some sort and happy to stroke his ego. God he loved this child in all her simplicity and innocence. He hoped she never became spiteful or jealous.

"Tommy," Lily said, winding her hands around his neck.

"Uhuh?"

"Can we go get swimming stuff for me today? You said maybe today or tomorrow. And can we go riding? And when can we go back to the tea rooms?"

He kissed her forehead, smiling at her rush of questions, and sat down, swinging her legs round so she could sit on his knee.

"Did you ask your sister about any of this?"

"Uhuh, she said I had to ask you, she didn't know whether you were busy or not."

At least she didn't seem to be poisoning the child against him.

"Did you ask Arthur?"

She shook her head.

"I'll make you a deal Lily," he said, reaching into his desk drawer for a cigarette, seeing the tarot cards there too, "I need to do something this morning, but if you go and speak nicely to Arthur - since he likes you better than he likes me - and you can get him to say I can take the afternoon off to go into town with you, we can go get you some swimming stuff after lunch. How's that?"

She nodded, but made no effort to move from his lap, laying her head against his chest instead and appearing to settle.

He lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, enjoying the feel of her against him as he expanded his chest against her weight. She took his left hand in hers and began to play with his ring as he smoked with his right.

"Tommy," she said, suddenly looking up at him.

"What is it my little love?"

"Are you angry with me?"

He frowned slightly, "Because you were in here? No sweetheart. Though I wouldn't push your luck with it, Polly's less patient than me."

He wasn't keen on her being in the shop when it was busy, he'd take her straight back into the house and lock the doors himself if he found her in the shop on a busy day - the language was coarse and men turned violent when they were drunk and losing money - but he quite enjoyed when she came in to see him if there weren't too many people about. She was always content just to sit on his lap as he worked on the books, or to bring her pencils and paper and sit and draw in silence. She simply seemed to like being near him - or Arthur. She didn't seem as inclined to touch things as Finn and Ada always had been, picking up cash boxes or books, or the bloody guns John left lying around too often. It had caused bloody chaos many a time when it was noticed that things were missing and they had been on the verge of fighting amongst themselves or firing members of staff more than once, stopped in the nick of time when one or other of his younger siblings was dragged in by the ear to admit shame-facedly to their elders' shoes that they had been 'playing.'

Lily didn't say anything, just kept playing with his ring with one of her hands, the fingers of her other going to her mouth. He didn't say anything either, just mulled through his thoughts as he smoked.

Ada wanted to keep the baby, to have it. That was what she had told Polly. That was what she had written to Freddie in that letter he had burnt. He wished now he hadn't burnt it. He wished he had read it, read what she had to say. He didn't want Freddie near his family. That was a given. But, whatever her damn reasons had been, Ada had picked him. And he had nearly lost his temper completely with her. And he didn't know how to take that back or make it up to her.

He sighed and looked down to find Lily's blue eyes looking back up at him, like she was worried about something. He needed to stop sighing around her.

He stubbed out the cigarette then said, smiling, "You going to go sweet talk Arthur for me bab?"

She gave him what seemed a slightly nervous smile in return and went to slide off his lap, but he caught her around the waist before she could and stood her up on his lap, holding her tightly to him for a second.

"Who's my best girl Lily?"

"Me," she replied, squeezing him back.

He kissed the side of her head, "Exactly. Now go get me the afternoon off so we can go get you some swimming stuff, eh?"

"Can we go see my horse too Tommy?" she asked.

"We'll see how quickly we get the swimming stuff. If Arthur says we can go at all," he told her with a grin, "But if we have time we can stop by the yard on the way home, how's that?"

"Ok," she said, nodding and beaming at him.

He helped her climb down and watched as she wandered off into the shop, padding across the wooden floor in her cream coloured socks, probably turning the bottom of them black, eliciting smiles from the men as she headed down to Arthur's office.

Arthur would give him a hard time about it later, but he wouldn't turn Lily down, Tommy was sure of it. And anyway, he didn't know how he'd feel tomorrow after his morning meeting. It was better to go today. He still hadn't even entirely decided if he was going the next day. Lickey tea rooms, Friday, ten o'clock. That was what the Inspector had told Polly. Lickey tea rooms. A random venue to have chosen. Accessible but out of the way. He supposed, perhaps, Campbell didn't want to be seen with him. That suited him.

He turned from watching Lily and took the piece of paper that had been in the typewriter out. Lily had obviously been typing whilst she'd been being a shop-keeper, the paper was littered with random letters and numbers, nothing making any sense. He smiled and put it on his desk, somehow not quite able to bundle the nonsense off into the incinerator, reaching for a fresh sheet and loading it up.

He lit a fresh cigarette as he looked at the blank paper for a while, trying to figure out what to say. Trying to will himself to do something he didn't want to do. But something that seemed like it might be the right thing to do, for Ada's sake.

He began to type.

'Freddie…'

As always, thank you for reading! In response to the responses I got re releasing some chapter's from Rosie's POV - I think I will do that, but that I'll see this story arc through here first. If/when I write them from Rosie's POV I will post them in a separate story, they will be their own offshot so there will be no *need* to go read them and they won't interrupt the flow of this story. Essentially they'll be there for people who want them and they won't be in the way of this story for people who don't want them.

This leads me to my next question (I know, I'm all about the questions these days!) I was on furlough, like many workers during the pandemic, when I started writing this but I am now being called into work on an ad-hoc basis and I'm not getting much notice of it - generally being asked the day before to be in the next day type thing. It's impacting on my writing time, obviously, which was partly why I'd been slowing my updates down to be once a week on a Sunday. Because I have been updating less frequently I've also been trying to ensure my updates are really meaty when they do go up so I don't make you feel like you're waiting all week for a one thousand word update type of thing and being short changed. Basically though, would you rather I updated more often with shorter updates or less frequently but with the longer updates when they do come? Also does the day staying the same matter ie would you rather I updated on the same day every week so you know when to look for a new chapter or does that not bother you too much?

Thanks again! I appreciate every single one of you xx