poison • thomas shelby

twenty five.

"First of all, fuck off!" She gasped as she put her middle finger up at the young ginger.

"Language, both of you." Polly scolded them, holding in an amused laugh. "There's a child here."

"There's two, actually." The brunette mumbled before pulling her tongue out at her sibling.

Ada interrupted their banter session, smiling softly at her aunt and her son. "You're much better with him than I am."

"He settles quicker with me because he can't smell the milk." The eldest of the four explained, leaning down to put Karl in his basket. "You look tired. Let's put him down."

All of them gathered around the basket, glancing down on the baby peacefully lying inside it.

"Mine were terrors for the tit." Polly admitted, smiling at the memory. "Both of them. Well, you never knew my children, did you?"

The two Wilkinson girls stayed quiet, obviously not having known her children. They didn't even know she'd had any before, leaving them with curious questions dancing around their heads. Thailiana pulled on her sister's arm, taking her to sit on the sofa while the other two continued their personal chat.

The Shelby women soon joined them, Polly beginning her story. "They were three and five years old, Sally was three and Michael was five, well- two weeks away from being six. It was Sunday morning, while I was at church, "you're not forgiven", this pinch-faced bitch said to me, "you're not forgiven"." She paused a few seconds before continuing, "You see, some sheets I washed and hung on the line had the name of a hotel on them. They'd been stolen in a robbery and they said sone porter at the hotel had been coshed, and a woman from round here told the police I had the sheets. Jealous, you see, of the new sheets."

"And when the police came, they found a spirit still for making a few drops of gin. And for that," Tears welled in the woman's eyes as she recalled the day everything had been taken from her. "They took my children from me, and they never told me where they took them. They did it because they could, because I was weak. But, they'll never take your baby away from you, do you know why?"

She glanced between the three girls who were staring at her with admiration for her strength, with sadness, with pity. She focused her attention on Thailiana, knowing that the brunette had guessed why, waiting for her to finish the sentence. Polly was smart, she'd brought the Wilkinson girls because she knew they would back up her hopes of taking Ada home.

"Because Tommy wouldn't let them." Thailiana nodded, understanding where the woman was going.

"Because Tommy won't let them walk all over us." The Shelby aunt added, "Now it is Tommy that has brought strength and power to this family. Cause he knows you have to be as bad as them above in order to survive. I'm telling you this, because I want you to forgive him."

"How can I?" Ada interrupted, almost disgusted by the idea of forgiving her brother. "When my Freddie is rotting in jail because of him."

"There's something about today that you need to know."

They stared at Polly in confusion and Thailiana glanced at the date in the diary spread on the table, eyes widening as she remembered. Shit. She stood, rushing to grab her coat, pulling it on.

"Well, come on, then!" She turned to her friends and sister, waving them to hurry up.

"Where are we going?" Ada asked as she grabbed Karl from his basket.