March // John Shelby x Reader - Peaky Blinders

Chapter 48

It's the first time ever that I'm out of bed by the evening of day one of my cycle.

"What on earth did you put in those cups of tea?" I ask Polly, still cramping but in a whole other world of relief as I wash the kids' hands before dinner.

"All the herbs that help," she tells me. "I'll make sure we keep enough on hand."

John continues to take care of me until I've finished bleeding, fussing over me even when the pain has eased. But eventually, with much insistence on my part, he stops worrying so much. We settle back into our routine.

I'm in the bakery, Florence helping me re-stock the bread shelves mid-morning, when John bursts through the door.

"Daddy!" Florence says, but John's face is dark and determined.

"Where's your mother?" He asks me, taking us both in his arms and pushing us to the kitchen. "Where the fuck's your mother?"

Mama's face creases in confusion, but she has no time to protest as John takes her arm, leading us all out the back door to the terrace outside. He's strong and insistent as he pushes us all to the floor in a huddle, beside the brick, out of view. He kneels before us. He shelters us with his arms, as though a load of war bombs are about to drop down.

"John," I whisper, "what—?"

But he presses a finger to my lips. I hug Florence tightly — I can feel her heart racing in her chest.

And that's when I hear it. The tinkle of the doorbell, usually so friendly, is suddenly ominous. Like church bells.

Florence pulls her collar up to her mouth, pressing her knuckles into her face. Mother doesn't move. John reaches a hand to his coat pocket, wrapping his fingers around his gun.

The only thing I can hear is my own heart pounding, blood rushing through my head, a ringing noise in my ears. I'm vaguely aware of the scratch of brick against my back, concrete below me.

A gunshot. The sound of shattering glass.

Pandemonium breaks out, just walls away. In the bakery. In my home. My mother's home, Papa's home.

John beckons us over to the wooden fence. He lifts Florence over first, then helps my mother climb up. She shakes, and I worry she might just drop off the top, but she leaps down unharmed. John's hands are warm against me as he helps me over, finally climbing himself.

He takes us through a back alley, until the sound of the fighting is no more than a distant drone, police sirens joining the mix from miles away. We reach a run-down terrace house with boarded up windows — John slams his gun into the door lock, and it swings inward.

"Stay here with Florence," he tells my mother. "Lock yourselves in a room upstairs. Don't open the door for anyone but us, alright?"

I bend down and hug Florence. "Are you okay?" I ask her.

She looks at me with her wide eyes and nods. Mother takes her, and we have time to do no more than exchange one last fearful glance, before John's steering me away, out of the house, and back through the alleyways once more.

"What the fuck is going on?" I ask him.

"We have to go," he tells me.

He's taking us the back way to the docks, where a canal boat is tied up and waiting.

"What about Katie and the twins?" I ask.

"They'll be safe at school."

He leads us to the boat, and holds out an expectant hand.

"Where are we going?" I ask, motionless but for my trembling.

"I'll explain everything, but we have to go right fucking now," he tells me.

I've never seen him so determined, his eyes burning with such a fury. He glances at something behind me and his eyes widen — he lunges forward and covers me, pulling his gun and shooting once, twice, three times. I turn and look as a hooded man drops dead to the ground.

"He followed us," I whisper. "Florence—"

"He was stationed here to keep watch, just in case," John says. He pulls me to my feet and lifts me onto the boat. "We have to go."