Liliana Mae Rosa Shelby // A Thomas Shelby Fanfiction // UNDER EDITING

13 - LILIANA MAE

"Liliana! Get your shoes on, now!" 

"Coming, mama!" 

Fourteen years old and yet still late for school. That was just Liliana all over. She was a bubble of laughs, smiles, respect, and kindness. She was a sweet, young girl who for the past ten years had lived an ordinary life, with ordinary parents. 

Liliana wasn't stupid, however. She knew things, remembered things. She'd grown up in London, but when first moved there she spoke with her cute Brummy accent. Her hair was dark brown and long, down to her waist, yet her mothers was shorter. Her eyes were a dark, almost black, brown, yet her mothers were hazel. 

She had an ordinary, nice life. Quiet, but nice.  She went to a normal school, she had nice friends and she loved to sing. Her -adoptive- mother had noticed Lily's voice when she was only a young girl. She would hum away at tunes to herself happily without a care in the world, and now at 14, her mother relished in listening to her daughter's beautiful, angelic voice echoing from the shower. 

Lily had questions, and lots of them too. She'd asked them, Lord knows she had, but her parents were never able to give her a definite answer. Lily's mother, Caterina, knew that Lily had spent some time in the orphanage before she and her husband took Lily into their care. She didn't know the ins and outs, she didn't know Lily's birth family history - the poor five year old girl came with nothing. 

It had been a long process for Caterina and Harry, trying and trying for a baby but to no avail. Caterina couldn't fall pregnant no matter how hard they tried, and after five years of trying and disappointments, they decided to take some trips down the local orphanages. Caterina and Harry were a young couple when they found Liliana, in their early twenties having been married for a handful of years. Two sweethearts from Birmingham who'd fallen in love at the age of sixteen and devoted their time and love to each other, only to be disappointed by the very nature of not being able to bring the most important gift into this world. 

When they'd visited the orphanage in Spark Hill - the irony of the poor girl being removed from her parents and placed five minutes down the road - the couple had been instantly drawn to the young girl with the piercing brown eyes and dark hair. They instantly noticed how reserved she was as she cuddled an old teddy that had seen better days, sat in the corner of the room on her own. The priest had payed the couple to take her as far away from Birmingham as possible, stating Liliana needed a better life with decent parents. Caterina had been taken aback by the statement and had felt the guilt in the pit of her stomach when the priest had handed over a wad of cash, more than the couple had to their name. But, selfishly, they wanted a child. They wanted to be parents. 

They weren't malicious people, heck they were deemed as saints in their community. They'd rescued an orphaned girl from the slums of Birmingham, no one needed more reassurance than that to deem the couple as heroes. They'd done good by Liliana, they'd raised her well and there was always the question on whether or not her birth parents would have been able to give her that - but that was no longer Caterina's concern. 

Harry had enlisted in the war and was shipped off to France not long after Lily was placed in their care. But, he never came home. Caterina was left to raise an orphaned child on her own, with little to no money, no experience, and no husband. 

Caterina considered taking Liliana back to her parents. A struggle to find them she would face, but she wanted too nonetheless. Caterina had finally got her dream - a beautiful child with a loving husband. But it was ripped from her all too soon, and before she knew it she was dependent on the whiskey her husband had kept stashed away in the back of an old cupboard. 

Ten years later Caterina still felt that guilt, and she missed her husband dearly. She never remarried, nor did she ever find the time, nor the want within herself to find another man, to love again so deeply as she did with her childhood sweetheart.