Cruel World - Thomas Shelby

Angel Hair and Baby's Breath

October 1910

The raindrops were fat and slow, they fell ever so gently down from the sky and into the water of the canal, calmly merging into the grey, as if this is where they planned to be all along. Even though the soft clouds, that reflected in the water, formed a shadowy wall, they were gentle and malleable in way that clouds are, even if they're spitting lightning. The cobblestone running along either side of the canal was also the similar tired metal shade that its surroundings were.

One thing I loved about October is that the weather made everything melt together, I felt incredibly unseen as I sat on a hay bale looking out on the water, deliberately avoiding the shelter of the stone archways and sinking into the puddle by my feet. I felt it even more on my way home: there was a slow flow of people in the streets, more eyes to be ignored by, dismissed as another reflection of emptiness, a ghost to everyone. I couldn't achieve that when the sun was out.

*

Despite the fact the coldness of the rain didn't feel overwhelming abundant when I was in it, once I shut the loud door behind myself, I became aware of the uncomfortable way my clothes were sticking to my body in their dampness and the fact my hair was so soaked, it was almost brunette.

'Eleanor, you were supposed to be home before the sun set.'

My mother was a rough woman, jagged around the edges and easy to set off – arguing with her had become a familiar habit by the time I turned 10.

'It's barely set,' I said making my way to the kitchen, 'besides, what does it matter if you've only just started eating?'

As I sat down next to my brother, my eyes wandered up to my mother, who was taking her seat opposite me. Her eyebrow twitched on her ugly face like a countdown for a bomb coming out of some old man's mouth and it made feel a hideous, satisfied way.

'It matters, because,' she threw up the words as if they were this morning's breakfast. Painful, yet uncontrollable, I thought.

'Because Nellie, we eat together.' My father interrupted.

I think eating meals together was a frail attempt to pretend that my family was happy. This particular Sunday, my timorous father had gone as far as inviting my older siblings, in, what I assume was, an effort to get his pinch-faced wife to like him more. My sisters, Morana and Brigit, were sat to the left of our mother, their dark hair and straight noses mirroring our Dad. I loved them fiercely; despite the age they both had on me and their constructive judgment, I often found myself protecting them. Truth is, I didn't believe they could look after themselves, after being set free from this house, they walked right into another trap – marriage. To my right, my brother, Henri was sat. If my sisters mirrored my father, and me my mother, he was a balance of the both: his nose and lips both smooth with roundness and his hair a dark blonde but floppy and dead straight. It was comforting to be able to spot these differences, to be able to look in my mirror and around the circular table and try to understand what I saw, without my features distorting and twisting.

It pissed me off, the fact everyone was pretending I was still a child. Pretending I wasn't 18 and capable of holding a civil conversation – I could, I just found more enjoyment in the clashing calamity of an argument.

'I just struggle to understand why it's so important.' I tried to stop smirking, as I looked down at my food. Blue met blue as I looked up at Henri's amused eyes.

'Eleanor!' her blonde hair seemed to stand up in fright, similarly to Morana's back. My head slowly turned to meet my mother's stare. I refused to fear being in her shooting range, rather I found amusement in the way it was so easy to set her off, like a Jack-in-the-box that I could wind and wind until POP and then I could laugh at it.

'You don't answer back to me.' The tone of the woman's voice had gone cold and emotionless. The hairs on the back of my neck were aware of the eyes of my entire family on me. With a warning glance from Henri, I looked down at my plate and busied my fork with the stale-looking potatoes on it. A dense silence suffocated the room, like a smothering, unmoving blanket, and I could tell, that for a moment, my father thought that it would last.

An embellished sigh left my lips and then a bang from mother's fist on the table almost instantly.

'You have to ruin everything, hm?'

I wondered if the potatoes had been cooked at all, they looked cold.

'LOOK!' Another fist to the table, 'Look at me when I speak to you girl.'

Mother said the word girl like it was a slur. Slimy and crawling in her mouth. My brother let a small murmur of a warning slip past his lips. I tried to make my expression seem bored, before meeting her eyes, since naturally I wanted to scowl and scream just as much as the woman opposite me. Obviously, I had succeed in looking uninterested, as five minutes and some more shouting later, I was lying in bed, with an empty stomach.

*

I believed my room was an anomaly in the house. We were poor, and lived in a tight, 3 story house somewhere around the centre of Little Heath; however, my parents (my mother) liked to pretend that we in fact had mountains of coins, and were just acting poor for the humbleness of it. Most of the walls were a tragic shade of yellow, I'm not sure if it was supposed to be fashionable, but I thought it just looked like we were a family of chain smokers - in all honestly we weren't far off. The furniture was either green or wooden, and all the pallid colours looked like baby sick to me. I liked to think my room looked far nicer, it wasn't all that colourful, but I made a point to cover my vanity with small scraps of paper I had drawn on, and made sure me bookshelf was ever growing. After Brigit moved out (she was the second youngest to Henri, but moved out to leave only me), I became well acquainted with the emptiness and started embroidering everything in my favourite shade of blue in some sorrowful pity for myself. I used to share a room with Morana, on the top story, she only ever used it for sleeping and never woke when I snuck out, but her leave didn't go unnoticed by my sensitive feelings. By that night it had been a couple of years since they had all left, but the feeling that I had been abandoned hadn't burnt out.

At some point, I'm not sure when, the paltry murmurs from downstairs died out. I had been lying on my back, in my bed, for what felt like only minutes, yet, as I averted my eyes to the window on my left, I realised it must have been a few hours, since the darkness of the sky was deep. I contemplated sneaking out, before rolling on my right, and falling asleep in the clothes and shoes I had sat in the rain in a handful of hours ago

Not sure if anyone is gonna read this, but i feel very motivated to write this story. the next chapter has tommy and is almost finished so i'll tryyy to publish it by tomorrow :) xxx belle

ps ik this chapter is short and kinda boring but i promise(!) it will get better <3