••Ocean Eyes•• Thomas Shelby

••Ocean Eyes••

Tessa Bridie, Manchester, 2018.

Have you ever felt like you don't belong? Sat round a table surrounded with your friends, with your family and you just don't fit in like the rest of them? That was the story of my life, and I don't want to come across as pathetic or whiney,  my life was dictated by the constant feeling that I wasn't were it belonged, I was a stranger in my own home.

This feeling had never been more prevalent than now with the passing of my grandmother, the only person in the world, besides my dog, that I could connect with.

My grandma was old, she wasn't sick or in pain she was just old, and it was her time and all I felt was loss, like a bullet had ripped through my chest. Maybe I felt like I didn't belong because she has always told me I was destined for more? Maybe I had got this stuck in my head as a child and I had let it fester into an idea, a thought I could not control? 

 I was 22 now and I hadn't gone to university like the rest of my friends and I had asked myself time and time again what was I waiting for? But I never had an answer, constantly free falling, waiting for something. 

My father was an alcoholic, although some people could call him functional, it was like Jekyll and Hyde and you didn't know which side of him you were going to get. and there was my mother, a sweet woman who needed me around to help her with my dad when he had his outbursts, often ending with me getting the short straw.She was a weak women, something I vowed never to be... but because of this, I never left home to become my own person, I was trapped in an eternal spiral of waiting. 

These thoughts often clouded my head and today of all days they filled my head like fog, because today was the day I had been dreading for weeks, we were going to go to grandmas and look through her stuff, to decide what we would keep and what would be thrown away. 

As I sat here now, in her attic looking through her photos and memories, I realised how short life is. All these things that mattered to her would soon be a distant memory, left to gather dust in our garage or thrown away to landfill.

"Nearly done Tess?" My dad shouted from the bottom of the ladder.

"Yeah just 2 more boxes."

"Okay, take your time sweetie." My dad was on another detox, his 5th failed one this year, not that I blamed him anymore, he was in the throws of addiction, trapped just like me. 

I sighed and picked up one of the last boxes and found just what I was looking for the photo albums. My grandma and I spent hours upon hours looking through them. Ones from when I was a baby right back to her grandmother and her mother. There was only a few photos of back then, but I adored them so much, the clothes, the faces it amazed me to think that the these faces once belonged to living breathing people. 

But as I pulled out this box from the back of the attic, I realised I didn't recognise these albums. there covers were tattered and worn, the brown leather casings peeling away and frayed at the edges. this surprised me as my grandma too so much care over her albums, maybe she hadn't realised these ones were here. They were badly bound and frail, so I took care in taking them out of the box. 

I opened the first page and a photo fell out and onto my lap.

"Damn..." I said picking it up carefully.

The faces I saw were ones I hadn't seen before too, and once again I was left puzzled. The people were dressed in suits and long dresses and posed there were 3 young men posed around 2 seated women and a small boy. These were quite obviously old photos, older than ones I had seen before. 

I took the frail photo in my hands and turned it carefully and written on the back was: 

The Shelby Family, Small Heath, Birmingham, 1919.

Left to right, Arthur, Polly, Thomas, Ada, John and Finn. 

As I looked down at the strangers faces, I started to feel as if I knew them. Their faces seemed somewhat familiar...maybe they were family and they lightly resembled a great aunt or second cousin I had met once at a family party, why hadn't I been shown these before...?

I placed the photo back into the album and turned the thin page slowly...

One action can change the course of your future, one wrong word, one wrong turn of a page can change your life forever and I turned that page...and this time, the face staring up at me was not one of a strangers...

It was my face.

Surrounded by a flowered frame, torn in the corner from obvious years of wear my brown hair was placed in curls around my face, messy and unruly.

"What the fuck...?" I whispered to myself,  my breath hitched in my throat and my head was reeling.

I took the photo from the book slightly too roughly and flipped it over quickly to reveal the writing underneath.

Tessa Bridie, Small Heath, Birmingham, 1920.

I placed my hand over my mouth and breathed heavily through my fingers. My name, my face on a photo that looked like it was taken over 100 years ago.

Tessa let's think logically here, if this is a family album then it is possible that I had a strong resemblance to a long lost relative, genes were funning things...but I also shared her name...and had the same freckle on my right cheek.

Any logical thought was my slipping from my head and going far far away from, this wasn't not a logical situation.

I flipped the page to look through the rest of the album and again saw my face, now next to the girl called Ada from the first photo, we were smiling in a small dingy kitchen. Then I was stood next to the man called Arthur, in a bar or pub. And then the last one was of a me and a man, his arm around me his lips hovering against my temple as I stood smiling. I flipped the photo over.

Thomas Shelby and Tessa Bridie, The Garrison, Small Heath, 1920.

I delved into the box again looking for another album or perhaps some loose photos but there wasn't any left. however, the bottom of the box was scattered with newspaper clippings, again from 1919 through the 20s in Birmingham, all surrounding the Shelby familia's and their success in business.

I sat there surround by the papers and albums for a few moments before I felt a long held breath leave my body. I was torn by what to do next...should I just place the photos back in the box and pretend I had never found them...or should I delve deeper. It was then I noticed something else hidden under the papers.

"Come on Tess, your friend will be here soon, and I thought you were going to go and have some fun?"

I had forgotten about Luca...my best friend? Maybe boyfriend? Saviour in many ways from my messy life, I don't know what I would call him...I had forgotten I had called to say we should meet today. 

But I couldn't answer back my dad back as I moved aside the messy papers to revealed a rough piece of black material, it was a cap, a cap that looked like the ones the men were wearing in the photos. As I held the cap in my hand, I felt a shiver travel down my spine and spread through my entire body. The hat felt so familiar in my hands as I turned it over and over, as if I had had it all my life, like a toy from childhood, or a favourite jumper, a strong smell of tobacco and something sweet emanated from it. 

It was then I began to feel a sense of anger... why hadn't my grandma told me about any of this stuff? And showed me the photos of the girl who had my face and name!? Did she even know they were here?? How couldn't she, they were right next to all the other albums in the attic how could she had not noticed...unless she had hidden them from me?

it was only then I had realised how hard I had been gripping the black hat in my hands..."Ouch!" I pulled my hand away and saw blood dripping from my hand. "What the..."

I looked down and saw that in the front of the hat were two, silver razor blades sewed carefully  into the front. I looked back down at my hand, I hated the sight of blood and the longer I looked the dizzier I felt. I closed my eyes tightly and shook my head, don't pass out...I told myself, but it was too late, my world began to spin in front of me and I dropped the hat on the floor, soon after my body followed.