Two Ghosts - Thomas Shelby

2 - Who's The Girl?

Even though Small Heath looked completely different when it was lit by streetlights, Sophie still felt strange walking past all of the places she remembered from her time growing up there. In all honesty, if her life had followed the plan she came up with 8-years-ago then she didn't think she would have ever moved back there. Before the war broke out, she planned to complete her training and then work as a nurse until she either met someone who she wanted to settle down with... or died.

At one point before she went away to France she had even been engaged to a rich American banker. He had been willing to give her everything she ever wanted in life. However, that relationship didn't work out. A few months after Terry Dawson proposed, Sophie decided that she just wasn't ready to give up her freedom along with the career she had spent her whole life trying to get, just because she would be a married woman and splitting her time between both sides of the pond. She realised that there was only one man she would give up everything for. Terry Dawson was not him.

A few months after Sophie broke things off with him, he showed his true colours. When Britain declared war on Germany, instead of signing up to fight like most able-bodied men, he used a mixture of his fortune, American citizenship, and family's massive influence on the American government to return to the safety of his mansion in upstate New York. His actions solidified Sophie's opinion of him. He was a coward, who rather than face tough situations head on, would bribe and pay his way out of them.

All in all, she was relieved she didn't give everything up for him when news of his cowardice reached her ears. She knew she would have regretted it for the rest of her life.

God knows she already had enough of those.

"Well here we are," Freddie sighed as he unlocked his front door and gently placed his sister's suitcases down on the sitting room floor. Electricity was almost unheard of in Small Heath in 1919, which meant the only light he could use to help him find where he last put the lantern was provided by the moonlight shining in through the open doorway, where Sophie was standing.

"Don't just stand there, Soph. You can come in," he added after lighting the lantern and noticing his sister was still standing outside on the front step. It was in this moment he noticed for the first time how tired his sister really looked. Her brown eyes no longer held the same joy and mischief they once did, underneath them were dark bags, telltale signs of her trouble sleeping. Her cheekbones were unhealthily prominent and the skin tightly stretched over them was a sickly pale colour, showing that she hadn't been eating as well as sleeping. It broke his heart to see her like this. He blamed himself for her pain. Ever since they were children he had always been protective of her, even whilst their dad was still around. He was always the first one to pick her up when she fell over, and the one to soothe her after she woke up from a nightmare. He knew he should've tried harder to convince her to stay in London. Although, he also knew his efforts would've been in vain. Sophie was the most selfless person he knew. She always put everyone else before herself. He could actually only recall two instances where she had done something for herself, the first being when she left Small Heath and the second when she returned.

Sophie stepped into the house and closed the door behind her. "Who's the girl?" Sophie asked, causing Freddie to stop pitying her and answer the question instead.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Soph," he replied, nonchalantly. However, Sophie could tell he was lying as he started to scratch the back of his head, something he always did when he lied to their mother about skiving school.

Sophie laughed. "I can tell you've had a girl in here, Fred. I can smell her perfume...Actually, I could smell it on you at the train station, so who is she? Do I know her?"

Freddie shook his head, laughing to himself. "Soph, I didn't find out about any of your relationships for ages, so I think that I am perfectly entitled to keep that secret to myself for a while," he responded, knowing that his answer would give his sister something to focus on other than the war that destroyed them both. "Anyway, enough about that. You've had a long day, you should try and get some sleep. You can 'ave my room, since you didn't write to tell me you were coming home until last week there is only one bedroom."

"To be honest, I didn't know that I was coming home until I wrote that letter, Fred." She sighed, before letting out a yawn that she desperately tried to hide. "Anyway, you've got work in the morning so you need sleep more than I do. I'll sleep down 'ere tonight, it's fine. Tomorrow I'm going to try and find somewhere else to stay, but for now I think I can handle sleeping on the settee for one night"

"Sophia, I'm not arguing with you about this. I'm sleeping down here. You're sleeping in my room," Freddie said sternly, leaving no room for Sophie to argue back with his use of the name she was only called by their mother when she was in trouble.

Thankfully, Sophie could tell that this argument was leading nowhere, other than falling out with her brother over something as stupid as who was sleeping where, so not wanting to risk that, she accepted her minor defeat and nodded her head. "Fine. Show me where it is, Frederick." Two can play at that game, she thought, as she followed him up the narrow staircase.

"My room's just in there," Freddie said, pointing to the door on the right. "If you need the loo then it's 'round the back of the house and the washroom is in there," he added, pointing towards the only other door.

Sophie nodded her head and said goodnight to her brother, before closing the bedroom door behind her and collapsing onto the bed. She was absolutely exhausted, but she wouldn't admit that to anyone. She needed to seem like she was fine, like she wasn't slowly falling apart, and to do that she had to pretend like she didn't only get, at most, one hour of sleep every night, before waking up screaming, or that she wasn't slowly starving herself because every time she ate something she could barely keep it down.

As Sophie laid on her side, facing the bright green wall, trying to get to sleep, her eyes started to water and the tears soon followed. This had become a common occurrence since returning from France. Every night she cried herself to sleep. She only ever allowed herself to cry when she was alone. That was a rule she had made when she was six-years-old, and as sleep took over her body she remembered the one blue-eyed-boy she used to make an exception for.

——————————————————

Thank you for reading this part. Sorry it's a wee bit short but I really wanted a chapter to introduce both the dynamic between Freddie and Sophie, as well as the many ways she is struggling after the war. In the next few chapters I'm going to start introducing more characters that we all love, as well as some we collectively despise so please stick around if you want to read about that.

As I said before, please comment any ideas you want me to incorporate into this story and I will try my best to include them.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling,

P x