The Sharpest Jewel | Alfie Solomons |

- 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟕 -

Camden London 1911.

Florence sat by the cracked window of her parents' old terrace house, her knees drawn up beneath her skirt, chin resting in her palm. Outside, the street wore its usual cloak of dull grey, the late afternoon drizzle turning the cobblestones slick and black. She watched the world move without her—neighbours hurrying home, a butcher boy wheeling his cart past, the call of gulls circling overhead. But her eyes were glazed, unfocused, her mind far away from Camden's daily rhythm.

Her fingers absently traced the faded floral stitching on the threadbare armrest of the chair beneath her—her father's old chair, the only thing she'd refused to sell when the debt collector came sniffing round. Everything else had gone: the sideboard, the dining table, the worn rug that used to sit under her mother's sewing basket. The house felt stripped bare. Lifeless. The way a body feels once the soul has left it.

Her mother had died six months ago. Collapsed in the kitchen, coughing blood into her handkerchief, too proud to see a doctor until it was too late. Florence had been there—helpless, kneeling by the hearth, holding her mother's shaking body as the life drained from her. One moment she was speaking, the next her lips just moved without sound. Florence still woke in the middle of the night with that image seared behind her eyes: her mother's slack face, the unnatural stillness that followed.

The days after had blurred together into a single, colourless stretch of grief and panic. Her job at the shop had ended just weeks before the funeral—Mr. Booth moving his business to Highbury, where the air was "cleaner," he'd said. He gave her an envelope with a week's pay and an apology, but that didn't help when rent came due. So she sold what she could. She kept the house, for now. But just barely.

Seventeen, and she felt like an old woman. Her body ached in the mornings, her hands red and raw from scrubbing linens, and her chest hollowed out by a grief that didn't leave room for much else.

She was alone now. No family, no friends... Ollie.... He hadn't visited in months, last time she saw him was at just a few weeks after her mothers funeral in the street he gave her a quick "hello" and a "how are you holding up?" the usual discussions after someone is made a orphan and then he bid a quick goodbye quickly hurrying down the street. She'd caught glimpses of him around town—always well-dressed, moving with the sharp, careful gait of someone who now watched everything around him. He hadn't spoken much of what he did now, but Florence didn't need to ask.

The sun was beginning to slip behind the rooftops when there came a knock at the door—soft, tentative. Florence startled. No one visited anymore, not really. Her landlord usually came banging, all bluster and impatience. This was different. She rose from the chair, wrapping her shawl tight around her shoulders, and opened the door.

Ollie stood there. His frame filled the doorway in that familiar way—broad-shouldered now, lean, his dark coat tailored and speckled faintly with rain. A grey wool scarf was looped around his neck, and his hair was neatly combed back, though still unruly at the edges. But his face—that face she had known since childhood— always changing, always aging. The softness had been carved away in the past two years, his baby fat now gone. His jaw was tighter, the shadows under his eyes darker. He looked older than twenty.

But there was something else, too. Guilt.

"Florence," he said softly, voice low and rough like he hadn't used it in a while. "I... I've been meaning to come round sooner." She said nothing for a moment, blinking at him as though trying to reconcile this version of him with the boy she used to know.

"You're soaked," she said at last, voice hollow with fatigue. "Come in." He stepped past her, slowly, glancing around the sparse room. His eyes moved over the empty walls, the cold hearth, the silence that clung to every surface. Florence stood by the door, arms crossed over her chest, the chill seeping through her sleeves.