THE WILDEST OF THEM ALL - a Peaky Blinders fanfiction
IN WHICH all sorts of things happen, at home and outside, every day, but Darcy doesn't recall having ever thought that in the life she had there was particularly bad. Life was like that, that's a...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
❂
There was a knock on the door.
Tommy hadn't left the empty betting shop since Esme had told him to get lost. Had it been well, he might've, actually. But his hands were too filthy from all the fault, from all the trouble and broken beings. Sitting at a different desk every other day, staring at the telephone, waiting for other ghastly news to come, that's what he was doing. Trying to figure out how it all came to be this bad, how blow after blow kept coming in the never-ending tumult of war.
Or perhaps he was waiting to pick up the cable and hear the voice of Grace, stirring on the other line.
"John!" Tommy called for his brother, louder, when the knocking turned more harsh and desperate.
After no answer but more knocking, Tommy ran his hand down his mouth, and scoffing, he went to open the door. There he stood, the man, her man, the bridge between Shelbys and Sabinis, the face behind the bruises on his sister: Richard Sabini.
"Is she here?" His voice was strained and shaky.
Tommy didn't even try to hide his disgust, "Who?"
He knew, of course.
"Darcy," Richard snapped, but soon restrained himself before Tommy Almighty. "Your sister?"
"No."
He was about to slam the door on him, when Richard choked in apprehension.
"She's not at Polly's, or Ada's. Or Winnie's."
Tommy just stared at him for long moments, with eyes narrowed, his lips apart — like a father trying to understand his blabbering child. With a distant shake of his head, Tommy smacked his lips.
"So?"
Richard's words came out through a cry,
"She left me."
Richie slept all night, and through the morning. When he woke up and realized that his wife wasn't there, he pretended not to notice. He had behaved like that since he was a boy, when his father terrorized him by his mere presence and he, in reaction, had trained himself to that half smile, to slow, tranquil gestures, to a controlled distance from the world around him, to keep at bay both fear and the desire to tear open his chest with his bare hands and, pulling it apart, rip out the heart.
Still, he went to work, and when he got home he pretended that Darcy had gone to her aunt's and before he went to bed he shaved carefully. He slept heavily all night, again.
The trouble began the next day. Esme at the betting shop told John that Darcy hadn't shown up. John telephoned Richard and Richard told him that his wife was sick. But he himself couldn't keep on lying. He was getting desperate, and after taking courage into himself to go see her family, Richard started searching. He went to Polly first, but the maid opened the door, and said that only Mrs Gray was home. Then, he called Ada, wondering if Darcy had gone to London to her sister. She's not here, Ada said — almost with a hiss, and put the phone down immediately.
