A Birmingham Story (ft. Thomas Shelby)

Chapter One

Birmingham smells like petrol and shitty ale. At least the war didn't change that. My mind still has trouble trying to wrap itself around the destruction and loss of human lives that the world has suffered for some egoistic ambitions. I won't miss waiting around the post office praying for something, anything from my brother or uncle, just to know that they were alright. But I suppose I should be grateful for the lack of letters, because the only ones we ever got were about the dead, and I most certainly won't forget the endless sobbing of the young widows or suffering mothers.

Birmingham used to be my home. I knew every street and every corner, but in the four years that I have been gone I am sure some things have changed.

I walk warily on the dusty cobblestones, just a few more steps until I reach the small rooms I'm going to call my own for the next couple of months.

My aunt has more money than she'll ever need, and she did offer to buy me a nice house, but I am tired of having everything served on a silver platter. Four years in a enormous mansion, one might even call it a small castle, in the misted mountaines of the north had been enough luxury for my whole life. Eating fish delicacies while the rest of the world was fighting for every breath was enough to wake up the nerve to tell my aunt that I am leaving for my hometown as soon as possible and that I am going to work for my own living. And that's what I was telling myself while walking through the murky alleyways of Small Heath.

I knew this neighbourhood by heart, even through I grew up in a spacious house in the center of Birmingham. Most of my friends were little pricks, born and meant to live in this shithole for the rest of their lives. I don't think I'll find any still here, the war couldn't have been so kind.

You might be wondering what a rich fifteen year old girl would be doing in Small Heath, well I was always a bit of a rebel. I never enjoyed the dresses, the manners every girl had to have in order to marry well. I loved to run freely, no thought about my family as I lay down on the doorstep at midnight, full of mud and dust but with a big smile on my face.

But like any respectable young lady I learned how to sew from the very best maids as a child. And now, after a well deserved rest after that horrible road, I'll have to head to my future job, because I had to start my life as a tailor in one of England's most infamous cities.

But while I am here I want to try to find out more about my family and what truly happened to them. That nightmare still haunts me to this day and I can't even get the sound of flying bullets out of my head when night falls. I can feel my life here won't be nice and easy as I want it to be.