Cruel World - Thomas Shelby

Let you wash all over me

'Honestly Nellie, get up.'

The voice of my sister didn't seem particularly strange when I first awoke, but after realising that she, in fact, no longer lived with us in my room, my eyes jerked open rather urgently.

Brigit's thin lips were pressed together, her face trying to scold me, but her eyes were too kind, and she was never able to make her expression tight enough to convince anyone she was capable of anger.

'What are you doing here?' I could feel my words tiredly squeak out of my throat.

The quilt lying on me shifted slightly as my arms brought my body up to a sit. She sat down on the bed, next to me.

'He would not admit it, but I think our father may have been worried.'

'Worried,' my mind was still asleep, 'what's he worrying about.'

'You.' She looked towards me, her eyes widening slightly.

'Oh.'

In my tiredness, my brain had graced me with a few moments of peace, in which I didn't recall the events of the previous day.

A sullen dread sat heavy on my heart.

My mother was due to come back that afternoon and, obviously, my father would inform her that he caught me walking around in the dark, early morning. She, unlike her husband, had always been able to see through my lies, never satisfied that I hadn't done anything wrong.

All of a sudden, a large wail came from the right side of the room, by the door. Brigit had twins by twenty, after following the advice of my mother, and marrying at eighteen. When she was pregnant, I wanted to hate her children so much, simply because it seemed they took so much away from her, but I couldn't keep up my resentment after they were born.

Elizabeth (named after our mother) came running in first; she was blonde, like me, and could string sentences together far better than any three-year old I had ever met. I believe that, somehow, I passed something down to her. A buzzing energy that could not be tamed by her mother – I was proud.

Trailing the child, her quieter brother, Louis, whose young face was strikingly similar to my sister's. I had secret ambitions for him to grow up to become a poet or painter or something else delicate and beautiful, due to the fact he always seemed to exist in his own imaginary world.

'Hello, Auntie Nell.'

Eliza's small face was cracked open by a toothy smile and, although I was annoyed to be awoken so early, especially by two toddlers, I sported a grin, certain than, with my frizzy halo of hair, I looked somewhat like a circus clown.

'Hello!' Neither sleep, nor the thought of my mother could drown out the cheeriness in my voice.

'Hi, Nellie.' Louis' voice was gentle.

He walked further into the room, leaning on and curling into his mother. When the noise of another pair of footsteps started making their way upstairs, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. My father could be so overdramatic.

I rolled them again when the figure came into view at the doorway of my room.

John was the man Brigit had married. I couldn't pretend that he was bad man, or that I could've chosen someone better for my sister, but the fact he had stolen her away from me so easily was enough to spark annoyance towards the man. He was a banker, which meant he made good enough money for the small family, and he was kind, but not in the frightened sort-of way my father was, so that did make him tolerable.

'Right, can everyone get out of my bloody room?'

'Eleanor.' My sister scolded my language, but laughed quietly anyway and took her family with her.