Nothing New / Peaky Blinders

𝗶𝗶: why's he talkin' funny?

"Absolutely not, sir!" She mocked a salute to the man as she stepped over the threshold. She couldn't remember how that had started but it had always been something Olivia did with Charlotte's dad.

Charles rolled his eyes, ruffling Olivia's hair as she walked past, "What have I told you? We're not in the army, Olivia, call me Charles."

"Okay, Charles." She drawled the sentence out, as if she was testing how it sounded, and the grimace that followed showed how she felt. "Nope, I think I'll stick to sir."

"Alright, alright, Lottie's in the kitchen with Eleanora, they were waiting for you."

Olivia couldn't help but smile, "Even after Lottie told me not to come over?"

"She knew you'd never listen." He smiled as the two parted and went to two separate rooms. The adults in the living room, where Charles threw himself onto the sofa next to his wife, and the children in the kitchen, where Olivia had made a semi-dramatic entrance.

And by semi-dramatic I mean she attempted to make trumpet sounds with her mouth but failed, quite, dramatically.

Eleanora and Charlotte rolled their eyes with a smile, "Look who finally turned up!"

"The life of the party."

This time, Olivia's best friends just rolled their eyes with any evidence of a smile suddenly having vanished.

"My Uncle turned up two hours ago, Liv." Charlotte deadpanned, stabbing her fork into her slice of cake - in an attempt to distract herself from the mean glare on Olivia's face.

"Moving on." Olivia said, eyeing up the cake before her, "Are we ready to begin?"

The three girls had some sort of ritual - and it wasn't as creepy as it sounded. Whenever it was one of their birthdays there had to be a birthday cake, and neither of the girls could eat the cake until the others were ready. Which usually didn't have any waiting time considering Charlotte and Eleanora were always good with time and on time. Olivia however...

In her defense, she usually wouldn't have to sneak out of her window and would be on time!

The, supposed, ritual had begun just over three years ago. A few weeks prior to Charlotte's birthday that year the mood within Small Heath had been low to say the least. Many men from the city had died within a short span of time, leaving many women without husbands and many children without dads.

Eleanora had been one of those children. Her dad was a name added to the growing list of men who had lost their lives on the frontline.

Before he had died, Eleanora had come from a very wealthy family, a large house that had lots of land and a farm! She was educated in what could be considered a private school in Worcester and definitely had a posher accent than anyone in Small Heath.

But then her dad died. And in came her uncle she couldn't stand, who convinced her grieving mum to sell the farm - their family source of income - and move in with him, in Small Heath, in his much smaller house so that he could keep an eye on them. Not only was there a problem that now Eleanora's family income rested on her uncle's low paying job, but also the teenage girl had to share a bedroom with her five year old brother.