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PROLOGUE: THE GALLOWS 1918
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THE LADY SAT AT the train station for as long as her heart would allow her to. She'd gotten there early, just as the sun began to rise behind a cloud of thick smog. The second it reached its peak in the sky, all light seemed to disappear with a blink of her eyes. A storm had rolled in, rumbling overhead to mark the thunderous return of their soldiers. Her soldiers.
Part of her couldn't wait to see them. To see Arthur's strangely bare face after he was forced to shave away his beloved moustache. To hear John's rambunctious laughter as he pulled his excited children into their first hug of four years. She wasn't ready to see his face drop when he realised Martha wasn't with them, that she hadn't been for months now, but that was a price she was willing to pay just to catch a glimpse of the younger boy who used to have a crush on his big brother's girlfriend.
Oh, how she'd missed him and Arthur, the siblings she'd always wished her own brother and sister would be. Sure, she had Ada and Finn while they were gone, but it wasn't the same. Ada was barely a woman when her brothers went away, and Finn was a child. He didn't even understand the gravity of Arthur, Thomas and John's return.
Thomas. She hadn't thought about him in a while. Perhaps that made her cruel, but every memory of him was a crack in her perfect façade of indifference. Slowly but surely, that façade had shattered like fragmented glass, spilling her heart out when all she wanted was to feel absolutely nothing.
Over time, it had gotten easier, but today was the day everything would come crashing back down.
It was the day that Tommy did the impossible by coming home to Helen Mavis.
The white lace gloves on Nel's hands managed to cover the tremble of them, but nothing would've been able to hide the pure fear that filled her eyes as the train arrived at the station. It was that train, the one that took thousands of their men away just four years ago. Now, it was returning, with nowhere near the samenumber of men on board.
"Nel?" Finn's soft voice sounded from beside her anxiously bouncing knee.
He, Ada and their Aunt Polly had accompanied her to the station much to her frustration. It wasn't that she didn't love them, didn't want to see them reunited with their family. Polly was the woman who had taken Nel under her wing when all hope seemed lost in the world. Not to mention that Ada was one of her first female friends in Birmingham. But Nel was nervous enough knowing what was coming. She didn't want them to see the illusion she'd created finally shatter.
"Nel, are you coming or not?"
Ada and Polly were already at the front of the crowd, using Polly's peaky cap and their status as Shelbys to push their way past mothers sobbing for their sons, past children screaming for their fathers, uncles, brothers. Nel should've been with them, but she wasn't. The second she spotted him stepping onto the platform with Arthur and John in tow, she wanted to flee, to disappear never to be found again.
