Bancroft - Peaky Blinders Reverse Harem x Reader

Chapter 45

A/n: Let me know your favourite chapter so far in the comments bc I always struggle with the breakup eras and would love to know what u guys have enjoyed so far 🫶🫶 thanks sm for reading i get so emotional that you're enjoying 😭😭

"I'm just heading out to the bank," mother says at breakfast.

"You can take Karl, if you'd like," Ada says. "He sleeps well in the pram."

Mother's eyes light up at this. I chew on my toast, wondering if she's always been so fond of babies. If she was like this with me, long before I could remember.

"I need to go visit a client," I tell mother, thinking quickly. "We're only eight weeks out from the races. I might be gone a few hours."

She presses her lips together in concern. "Alright. Will you be going too, Ada?"

"No, I have a book I've been meaning to read," she says. "I'll stay here."

"Ah, lovely," mother says politely. "Which book?"

"The Fifth Year of the Russian Revolution," she answers.

Mother looks as though she might faint.

I force a laugh. "You're so funny Ada," I say, widening my eyes at her. "Wasn't it Dickens?"

"Oh, yes," she stammers. "We always did joke, didn't we?"

As I leave the house, I swear I see her slip a yellowed novel with a communist symbol from her bag.

***

My stomach is in knots the whole train ride to Birmingham. I don't want to do this — but I don't know where else to go to find Aberama Gold.

And, if I'm being perfectly honest, I need to see Tommy again.

I need to explain myself. I'm struggling in his absence, and regretting my decision more and more as the countryside gives way to the Midlands. The further I go, the more resolute I am that I may not go back to London at all. The thought fills me with joy.

I can give mother the house, I decide. It's a small price to pay if it keeps her happy, and she can establish a life of her own.

And maybe, maddeningly, I could come back to Small Heath.

Because I realise, as we pull slowly into the dark train station, smoggy from all the coal, that my heart is no longer in London.

This feels like home.

Every step to the Shelby's house fills me with more courage and more happiness than I could have ever anticipated.

I'm expecting Arthur to throw open the door, John to wrap me in a hug, and Tommy to have a horse already saddled for me.

It's more than I deserve.

And it's more than I get.

Nobody answers the door on the third knock, and so I push it open, stepping tentatively inside. "Hello?" I call out.

The house is empty. Quiet.

I stand foolishly in the hallway, soaking in the smell of the pine disinfectant Polly makes up. The smell of freshly brewed tea, last night's whiskey, and the stale traces of Tommy's cigarettes.

I crumble to the floor in a heap.

Waves of emotion cascade through me and I cry, my whole face scrunched up as I completely break down. None of this was supposed to happen. I'd been waiting for my mother to return for me ever since the day she left, and it was always meant to feel good. My whole life, it was all I'd wanted. To know I'm loved. Not rejected, not abandoned.

And now it feels so very, very hollow.

Now I wish she hadn't come.

The back door opens and I still, silencing myself. I pull myself together. Fighting back the sobs, I pull myself to my feet, wiping the tears from my face. I set my jaw.

It's Michael. 

He stares at me for a moment. "Come to pack the last of your things?" He asks me coldly.

I steel myself. "I came to—to ask Tommy something."

"Tommy's not here. He's away for work. He's with Lizzie."

Something inside of me shatters like glass. "I didn't know who else to ask. I need to find someone." I realise my hands have begun to tremble.

"Who?" Michael asks, raising an eyebrow.

I can't fight it. I sniff. "I think I've fucked everything up," I say.

He softens. "Yeah, I think you have."

But he pulls me in for a hug, and for just a moment, it's solace. For just a moment, it's like I belong here once more.

"I don't know why I did it."

"It's because your mother's a cunt," he says. "She knows what she's doing. Surely you can see it."

I squeeze my eyes shut. How can I possibly begin to explain to him that if she's a vile human being, that means I am too? That a part of me so desperately wants to be wrong about her, because then it means I'm okay. There's hope for me yet.

Because if I'm the product of her and my father, there's nothing good about me. I'm just as selfish and awful.

I feel awful.

I want to feel awful.

I pull my head back. "Michael..."

His nostrils flare, as though he already knew. He's been expecting this. "No," he says.

But I clutch at his shirt, desperate. "Please."

"Tommy would hang me by my bollocks."

"I don't want you to fuck me," I say. "I don't even want you to kiss me."

"Then what do you want, eh?"

I gulp. "You showed me for a reason. You always knew this would happen."

"Forget it." But I can already see it in his eyes — he's not as unmovable as he's pretending to be.

"Please," I whisper. "You're angry with me. So be angry." I press up against him. "Show me how angry you are."

"You think I want to hurt you?" He asks me quietly.

I shake my head. "I think you want to teach me a lesson."

My last thread of hope has been crumbled by those three small words, he's with Lizzie.

I remember the only flash of my father's kindness, one day shortly after mother had left. I slipped in the hallway and landed on a vase and it shattered, slicing me in the process. Father smelled like mead and he looked at me, bleeding amongst the China and peonies, and he said, "If something breaks, it was shit to begin with. Best to throw it out."

As I take Michael's hand and we go up the stairs, I realise that I am the vase on the floor.

Never again will I be full of flowers.