The Sharpest Jewel |Alfie Solomons|

~ Chapter 22 ~

Small Heath, Birmingham 1918.

The streets of Birmingham were bustling, but to Florence, it felt like she was walking through a haze. She'd managed to find a small room in a run-down lodging house on the edge of town. It wasn't much—barely anything, really. The walls were streaked with mold, the floorboards creaked with every step, and the constant scurrying of rats kept her up at night. The smell of damp and decay clung to everything. She had never known such squalor, but it was all she could afford.

The war had taken so much from her, and now that it was over, it felt like there was nothing left. No one was hiring nurses anymore, not here at least. With the fighting done, they were no longer needed in the same way. She walked the streets daily, searching for work. But there were no bakeries in sight, no comforting scent of fresh bread and pastries like back home. All she found were factories and warehouses, places that made her stomach turn with their smoke and noise. And even those jobs were scarce, most of them given to returning soldiers or men desperate to find work.

She spent her days wandering through the city, her boots worn thin from walking on the cobbled streets, and her nights huddled in her cold, damp room. The lodging house was filled with people just like her—displaced by war, trying to find their way in a world that felt foreign now. The walls were thin, and she could hear the coughing of sick tenants and the cries of children echoing through the halls. Every morning, she would wake up and try to clean the room, scrubbing at the stains on the walls and floor, but no amount of effort made the place feel clean. Her money was running low, and she knew she had to find work soon or face the streets. She ate sparingly, often skipping meals just to stretch out what little she had. Sometimes she would sit by the window, staring out at the grey, smoky skyline of Birmingham, and wonder how her life had come to this.

She missed the smell of the sea back home, the warmth of the bakery where she had worked, and even the constant hum of the nurses' tents during the war. As awful as those times had been, at least she had had a purpose, a place to belong. Now, it felt like she was adrift, with no anchor to hold onto.

Florence sighed, leaning against the worn-out frame of the small window, watching the world outside pass her by. How had she ended up here, in this forgotten corner of a city she had never imagined she'd call home, even temporarily? She clenched her hands, feeling the rawness of her knuckles from the cold. There had to be something. Anything. But for now, all she had was this room and the empty uncertainty that came with it. The cold seeped into her bones, but she hardly noticed it anymore. She had thought about going back to Camden, back to where everything had begun. Her parents' old home, the familiar faces of the neighborhood, the bakery where she'd spent her mornings kneading dough and chatting with the locals. But something deep inside told her that Camden was no longer her place. She had changed. The war had changed her in ways she hadn't fully understood yet, and she couldn't imagine returning to the person she had once been.

The bakery felt like a lifetime ago, another world she could hardly recognize now. The laughter, the simplicity, the small joys she used to find in the routine of her work—it all felt like something that belonged to someone else. Could she really go back to kneading bread, to gossiping with customers, to the warmth of the oven? No. She wasn't that person anymore. That life felt distant, like a dream she'd woken up from, only to be plunged into the cold, harsh reality of the world.

Even if she did return, what would she do? The people she once knew, the life she once had, would be waiting for someone who no longer existed. They would look at her with familiarity, expecting the same Florence they had known. But the Florence who had left Camden for the war was not the same Florence who now sat in this mold-ridden room in Birmingham. She had seen too much—felt too much. Death, suffering, the weight of loss that clung to her even now. There was no place for her back there. She knew it instinctively, almost as if Camden would reject her in the same way she felt alienated from it. It wasn't just the place—it was her. She didn't belong there anymore. The bakery's warmth would feel stifling, the people's questions suffocating. They wouldn't understand the quiet horrors she carried with her, the faces of the soldiers she had nursed, the cries of pain she couldn't erase from her memory. How could they?