PROLOGUE:
THE GALLOWS
1918
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THE LADY SAT AT the train station for as long as her heart would allow her to. She'd gotten there early, just as the sun began to rise behind a cloud of thick smog. The second it reached its peak in the sky, all light seemed to disappear with a blink of her eyes. A storm had rolled in, rumbling overhead to mark the thunderous return of their soldiers. Her soldiers.
Part of her couldn't wait to see them. To see Arthur's strangely bare face after he was forced to shave away his beloved moustache. To hear John's rambunctious laughter as he pulled his excited children into their first hug of four years. She wasn't ready to see his face drop when he realised Martha wasn't with them, that she hadn't been for months now, but that was a price she was willing to pay just to catch a glimpse of the younger boy who used to have a crush on his big brother's girlfriend.
Oh, how she'd missed him and Arthur, the siblings she'd always wished her own brother and sister would be. Sure, she had Ada and Finn while they were gone, but it wasn't the same. Ada was barely a woman when her brothers went away, and Finn was a child. He didn't even understand the gravity of Arthur, Thomas and John's return.
Thomas. She hadn't thought about him in a while. Perhaps that made her cruel, but every memory of him was a crack in her perfect façade of indifference. Slowly but surely, that façade had shattered like fragmented glass, spilling her heart out when all she wanted was to feel absolutely nothing.
Over time, it had gotten easier, but today was the day everything would come crashing back down.
It was the day that Tommy did the impossible by coming home to Helen Mavis.
The white lace gloves on Nel's hands managed to cover the tremble of them, but nothing would've been able to hide the pure fear that filled her eyes as the train arrived at the station. It was that train, the one that took thousands of their men away just four years ago. Now, it was returning, with nowhere near the same number of men on board.
"Nel?" Finn's soft voice sounded from beside her anxiously bouncing knee.
He, Ada and their Aunt Polly had accompanied her to the station much to her frustration. It wasn't that she didn't love them, didn't want to see them reunited with their family. Polly was the woman who had taken Nel under her wing when all hope seemed lost in the world. Not to mention that Ada was one of her first female friends in Birmingham. But Nel was nervous enough knowing what was coming. She didn't want them to see the illusion she'd created finally shatter.
"Nel, are you coming or not?"
Ada and Polly were already at the front of the crowd, using Polly's peaky cap and their status as Shelbys to push their way past mothers sobbing for their sons, past children screaming for their fathers, uncles, brothers. Nel should've been with them, but she wasn't. The second she spotted him stepping onto the platform with Arthur and John in tow, she wanted to flee, to disappear never to be found again.
It was better that way, easier. She really wasn't sure why she thought this would be a good idea.
"In a moment, Finn," Nel murmured upon remembering the young boy who was waiting for an answer. "You run along now. I bet your brothers are wondering where you are."
The reminder had Finn sprinting through the crowd, eagerly shouting John's name as the man in question searched around for him. The second he was gone, Nel forced herself to stand, hands smoothing out the folds of her blue dress. It was a soft shade, as white as snow, but a hint of blue ran through the seams like tidal waves, like Tommy Shelby's eyes cutting through the crowd like the blade sewn into his hat on Nel's head.
She'd have to return it first. Then, the next train to London didn't look so bad.
"Helen."
He was so close, too close, like a hand wrapped around Nel's throat. Instinctively, she tugged at the collar of her woollen coat, inhaling sharply through her nose.
Was this what it was like to drown? To have your life squeezed out of your lungs?
Tommy's eyes scanned over her face - searching for what? Nel didn't know. Whatever he found seemed to satisfy him, though, for he turned away like he never wanted to see her again. Perhaps he didn't. She had refused to marry him, after all.
But Helen? Tommy never called her Helen. In fact, it was he who had given her the nickname Nel in the first place, sometimes even Nellie. She wasn't Helen to him, wasn't the stone-cold woman her parents had desperately wanted her to be. She was his Nellie; the woman who cried when other people cried, who as a kid would collect ordinary rocks off the streets and call them diamonds, who loved horses because he loved horses, who he'd once wanted to spend the rest of his life with. They had plans for children, for a big house with chickens and the lot, plans that Nel had crushed into smithereens.
"Thomas."
Tommy scoffed. Nel never called him Thomas, not unless she was angry. He was always Tommy to her, sometimes Tom, though Tommy rarely ever let anyone call him that. He wasn't Thomas, wasn't his father's son. He was her Tommy; the man who'd kill to keep a smile on her face, who loved horses because his mother had loved them, who wanted to give Nel Mavis real diamonds instead of cheap knock-offs, who once got down on one knee and asked to put one of those diamonds on her ring finger. They had plans for children, one boy and one girl. They'd both have their mother's blonde hair and their father's blue eyes. They'd want for nothing, not like their parents had.
But Nel had crushed those plans into pieces, so perhaps he wasn't her Tommy anymore, for there was no way she was his Nel.
"Here's your cap," she murmured, pulling the hat from her head and pushing it into his hands. Her hair fell in loose waves around her face, lost without his cap to hold it in place, and Tommy had to fight the urge to tuck the stray strands behind her ear, to merely grip the hat like it was a sword - or better yet, a gun. "I was just leaving."
The foolish part of her, the cruel part that broke a man's heart then came back for more, wanted him to stop her, to profess his love again. Would she say yes this time, now that war was behind them and he was there to stay?
In total honesty, Nel didn't know, and neither did Tommy.
"I think that's best."
So she went, not once looking back no matter how much she longed to. She heard Polly and Ada calling her name, the confused questions they directed at their nephew and brother. Arthur and John said nothing, not that Nel had expected anything different from them. They would've known what she did after four years in the gallows with their brother. They had every right to hate her for hurting him, for betraying their family. Soon, Polly and Ada would despise her too, resent her for knowing and not telling them. Finn wouldn't understand, but he'd forget she ever existed sooner or later.
Nel Mavis was officially alone. She wasn't a Peaky Blinder. She certainly wasn't a Shelby. She wasn't even a Mavis, not anymore anyways.
She was just Helen - no, just Nel, with a dangerous world laying at her feet, and a dangerous God waiting for her past to creep into the present.
Really, she didn't know which was worse.