sweet french. peaky blinders

73

Lucille

Tommy's arm was warm, wrapped around her own. For the first time in days, Lucille felt content, even if she knew the feeling would be fleeting. Arthur and John never failed to make her smile with their silly games and playful comments. Since leaving the Garrison, they'd spent the walk to Watery Lane with their guns out, playing some sort of game of cops and robbers, mocking shots and injuries and shouts of profanity.

Adds laughed the whole way home, her small face like a ball of sunshine as she tried to waddle forward to meet her uncles. Arthur stopped halfway up the street and swooped down to meet her, hoisting the small child up into his arms.

"Let's go get John, eh," he said before he chased after his brother, arm held out to him as John skidded away, hand held to his head to stop his flat so from flying away.

Lucille watched them with a smile as they reached Watery Lane.

"Has anyone ever told you that you could make a good father, Arthur?"

"No never," he said, putting Adds down so she could take her mother's hand. "Haven't met the right women yet, either."

"You will."

Arthur nodded before he ran back after John, skidding through the door of the house, crashing into the kitchen. Lucille and Tommy followed, Adds between them, tumbling over her feet slightly as she hopped over the doorstep, in too much hurry to see Polly.

"Run for the hills! It's the Digbeth Kid!"

"You know when you used to tell me about your brothers I never thought I'd see them running around like they're playing with toy guns," Lucille said as Tommy took her coat, hanging it at the door.

He let out a puff of a sigh. "I never thought I'd see that either."

"Get out of town kid or I will shoot your fucking head off!" Arthur's shout came from the kitchen. "You're dead. Go down, John."

John didn't respond. When they walked into the room, he was standing straight behind Arthur, his eyes directed to his Aunt where sat a boy no older than seventeen beside her. Arthur turned with furrowed brows, beady eyes resting in the stranger.

"All right then Polly," he said swiftly. "Who's this?"

"Gentlemen, this is your cousin," Tommy said. "Michael."

"Pleased to meet you," the boy said.

Dressed in his light coloured suit and with the slick hair, Michael seemed to look less like Polly's son than he had all those weeks ago when she'd visited his adoptive home with Tommy. Then he'd been minimally dressed- a pair of trousers and a white too, braces hanging down his sides, hair unravelled from the styled it must have been made into that morning by his mother. Even the bow around his neck stood out oddly. Too prim and proper, one of the Shelby brothers might have said, had the boy been anytime but their own cousin.

The two boys looked at each other, sharing a single, disbelieving glance before Arthur stepped forward, the first to greet him. Like John, his hat was clutched between his fingers, giving his hands something to do.

"I'm Arthur. You've met me. I used to throw you out of the window so John could catch you," he said, a smirk slowly forming against his lips.

John nodded and cleared his throat, stepping beside his brother. "I used to put you in a shoebox and kick you down Watery Lane."