𝔹𝕠𝕣𝕟 𝕥𝕠 𝕃𝕠𝕤𝕖 | Tommy Shelby

𝕀. ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴏx

𝕋ommy thought alcohol was playing tricks on him when, out of the darkness, he caught a glimpse of Ada carrying a box, standing on the threshold of the door leading to his study. He hadn't seen his sister in weeks and the appearance of her figure led him to rub his eyes. He took a sip of the whiskey and the drink burned his esophagus.

"It's true what Lizzie says." Suddenly, the hallucination was determined to talk. "Your condition is pitiful."

Ada's heels entered the room and the noise they made at the contact with the wooden floor caused him a headache. Tommy felt as if someone was hitting his skull with an iron mallet and impulsively massaged his temples. He wanted to vomit, go to sleep, and keep drinking until he vomited again.

His sister left the box on the desk in front of him, circled him, and drawn the velvet curtains. Tommy made a groan of annoyance when he was blinded by the sunlight that invaded the studio and filled everything with an unbearable light. Then, he knew that Ada's annoying appearance was not an appearance itself, but it was her in person, who, for some unknown reason, was speaking to him again.

"What the hell are you doing here?" He asked and forced his eyes open. They burned horribly.

"That's a good question." Beyond the pronounced dark circles and the absence of makeup, Ada looked as always. Tommy watched her sit in one of the chairs across the desk. "There's not a second where I don't question what I'm doing. Trust me."

Since that fateful night, Tommy had not had a totally sober day. He was spending hours in his study, walking from one end to the other with his glass of whiskey and cigarettes and, ignoring the advice that Aunt Polly had given him, he slept there instead of in bed with Lizzie. He had never been an exemplary father, but since he lost what he considered the last glimpse of hope, he tried to stay away from his children. He loved those kids but did not want to make them partakers of his misery; misery that his wife always insisted on highlighting and, in some way, increasing.

Drunk and all, Tommy found the way Ada was staring at the wooden box in front of her eyes. That she was there was strange enough considering she incriminated him in its entirety for the death of her friend, but stranger was she brought with her a box that she refused to open.

"What's that?" Tommy was forced to ask.

"Diaries." Ada's short answer seemed enough, so he took the nearly empty bottle and poured himself a little more whiskey. Ada seemed offended by his disinterest. "Olivia's diaries " she added.

His hand trembled with spasm when he heard that name and a little drink splashed on the polished wood of the desk. Tommy raised his eyes until he met Ada's and both siblings looked at each other for a couple of seconds until she relented with her jaw clenched.
"I brought them for you to read," Ada said. "You know Olivia was a writer. She wrote all the time and even put poetry into the shopping list." For a second, her sister's voice cracked but she struggled to maintain her integrity. "You know all this, so I don't know why I explain it to you."

"I didn't know she wrote diaries," he surprised himself, wondering how many mysteries the woman he had loved had taken to her grave.

"Neither do I." Ada shifted uncomfortably in the chair. "I discovered the box in her closet a week after the funeral, when I was brave enough to dispose of her belongings. I was going to return them to her family, in London, and that was what I did with everything else ... except with the diaries. I couldn't do it. Much to my regret, I couldn't control myself and started reading them. This amount you see here was written by the time she lived with me"

With difficulty Tommy got to his feet and, controlling the unbearable dizziness as best he could, opened the box and peered down at it. It was full of notebooks of all sizes, and some had stuff tucked between the pages. A pain settled in his chest: she had lived with Ada for only a year and, apparently, in those diaries she had documented in detail her chaotic life in Birmingham.
"Why do you want me to read them?" He couldn't help asking the question with a certain annoyance. It seemed as if Ada was trying to dig into the wound as revenge.

"You're the protagonist of each of these diaries," she said, offended. "Olivia came to live with me at the end of March last year and since she met you a couple of days later, she hasn't stopped writing about you. She's... quite descriptive in some scenarios, but when I finished reading all these chronicles, I realized that, to be a Shelby, you were kind enough to her. And apparently you loved her. Or at least, so she believed."

"I loved her." Tommy had an urgent need to defend himself and saw Ada looking at him uneasily.

"Do you remember when you met her?" Ada asked.

"Yes." Tommy was dizzy and didn't feel like continuing with the talk.

"It was in this same house, during the gala dinner I gave to promote my literary magazine. A gala where the Peaky Blinders had to do their thing."

Ada stood up and took a diary from the box. Opening it, she took out a photograph between the pages and handed it to him. Tommy received it with disgust and before putting all his attention on the image that returned his sight, he prepared himself for the blow that the memory would give him.

In grayscale and on the piece of paper, all the guests of that dinner that seemed so far away were immortalized. He did not bother to identify all the faces because he was only interested in one: hers. He found her where he knew he would find her: next to Ada and with a glass of cognac in her right hand. Tommy allowed himself a slightly bitter smile. She was beautiful.

The blue velvet of her dress looked sad in that gray hue, but the dark brown color of her hair had intensified, as had her brown eyes, deep as the void itself. The photography had managed to perfectly capture both her beauty and her discomfort, and the immense desire she had to go home.

"Olivia was about to shout she wanted to leave," Ada observed sadly.

"She didn't shout it, but she did tell me." Tommy could barely speak. "After that bastard humiliated her in front of everyone, we met in the balcony and she was crying."

"I know, she wrote it in her diary."

"Did she?"

"Tommy, I'm telling you she wrote everything," Ada took his brother's cigarette case, which was sitting on the desk, and lit a cig. "Here. Read the first diary. Start reading from this entry: April 1st of last year", she demanded, opening the notebook almost in half and pointing anxiously.

"No."

"What the hell...?"

Tommy had to admit that the pile of diaries made him curious. He found it interesting to delve into the memories of the woman he had lost. But he couldn't read them because he would feel that he was being too daring and would violate, for the first time, the limits that she had been able to set while she was alive. Second, he knew that reading her words would be like bringing her to life just for a little while, when he wanted her forever. When finished, he would lose her again and Tommy was not prepared for such a thing.

"Leave me alone," the somber tone of voice did not intimidate his sister, "and take this bloody box with you."

"Interesting." Ada was visibly surprised but still allowed herself to be sarcastic. "Thomas Shelby was able to deal with the Germans in France, with the Italians in Small Heath and New York and with the Russian aristocracy, but he is afraid of what a woman can say about him in her diary." Tommy clenched his fists. "So that's your weak point. The fascists will be delighted to know ..."

"Take the fucking box and leave."

"I'm not leaving and I'm not taking the box, Thomas Shelby." Ada put the cigarette in the ashtray. She was furious. "I will read and you will listen to me."

"You won't"

"Oh, yes, I will" Ada challenged him. Tommy snorted and rubbed his eyes. No one ever listens to him.