Blue Eyes

21

I'm going to be steering away from canon for just a bit. I want to focus less on the Shelbys and more on Alfie and Camden Town. But don't worry, I'll make my way to the Changretta plot later on.

Every Wednesday afternoon, Ella would travel down the street to Minnie's flat. There, she would hold tea for the friend group. The location never varied. Minnie was one of the few women in the group who didn't have children. So the rest of the group took the afternoon as a welcomed break from the kids. Either they were in school, or they would drop them off at a relative's house for a few hours. Sometimes, they'd bring the kids along, letting them play with toys in Minnie's parlor while they talked in the adjoining kitchen.

Ella adored all of the children the women had. Ollie and Elsie had four kids ranging from even to eight months. Ruth had a two-year-old daughter who was her entire world. Annie was pregnant with her first, having only just gotten married. Nora was also pregnant but with her third child, already having two young boys. And finally, Lydia, the oldest of the group, took home the prize of most children with six little ones.

Every opportunity, Ella took to babysit. She missed her nieces and nephews, wishing she could see them again. It wasn't their fault the family had been torn apart. She'd made note of Charlie's birthday and had cried when she realized how long it had been since she'd seen him.

Still, she kept her sanity despite the seemingly irredeemable loss of her family. The relationships with the Camden women and women from work helped. Along with Alfie, they reminded her that she had a choice of who her family was. Last names didn't matter one bit.

On Wednesdays, Ella left work early, freshened up at home and headed over to Minnie's. Sometimes she brought along baked goods she had tried to make. It was usually just to ask Minnie what she'd done wrong because they didn't quite taste as good as they did when they'd made the same thing together.

She adored the small, tight-knit group of women and was grateful they had been so welcoming to her. It did help that most of them were wives of men who worked for Alfie. Some women in Camden would hardly look at Ella not because of her lack of religion, but because of her affiliation with the gangster boss.

They were quite different from the women she'd been raised with. They were modern women in an orthodox community. Their hair was covered because of their marital status, never wore trousers, they attended temple without fail, and were devoted to their husbands. They were the Jewish women that Alfie's mother probably wanted him to marry. But times were changing and they'd secured some freedoms. Among friends, they were chatty and loved to have a good laugh. They tittered about topics that most men would deem inappropriate for women. Some even had a good deal to say about the current climate. But it was all good fun.

They especially liked having Ella around. The Shelby girl was extremely interesting to them both because of her different upbringing and her unorthodox relationship with Alfie. The women were careful not to discuss the Shelby family. Ella had been clear that she no longer associated with them and would rather not go into too much detail about the situation. Minnie, the one closest to Ella, knew a bit more than the rest of the group. Ella had confided in her about the actions Tommy took to get her arrested. Also how her family was still facing the death sentence.

But they did hawk her about Alfie. Most of them had known him for a very long time but only knew him as the gruff, intimidating man who had violent tendencies towards his enemies and questionable morals. None of them ever expected him to find someone to love.