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☾ 𝐸𝐼𝐺𝐻𝑇𝐸𝐸𝑁
Polly shivered in her skin, hands scraping over her arms to keep in whatever warmth was already there. She was always so cold, frost bitten through and through, even though she spent every night sitting by the fire with chattering teeth. Her frailness didn't help in her fight against the icy existence her body was stuck in; she was so thin, bones jaunt in her face and sticking out at all angles.
Micheal had taken her to Watery Lane, to her home, to the place where everything started. It didn't feel like home anymore though- it was too small and too close to the bustle of the betting den. In short, it was nothing like her beautiful home from Sutton: the townhouse Micheal had forced her from. When Polly protested against her son's want to move her 'home' as he called it (despite the fact he had never lived there), he hadn't understood. He believed she was going mad, too lazy to move further than to reach for the bottle of whiskey on the fireside table, or the medication that was hid on the marble mantelpiece.
Polly cackled out a laugh at the thought. She wasn't lazy. No. She was free. Her mind was more open than it had ever been before, her eyes feeling as if her lids were peeled open, not allowing her to miss a single haze of the light. It didn't matter where she was- realised that after a week of being in Small Heath. She could hide the medication and store the liquor quite easily, where ever she was.
A necklace of rope was still laced around her neck. Polly was sure she could feel it, but as her sharp finger nails reached for her chin, she scraped against skin, the trickle of pain alerting her senses to the cool blood that slid toward her collar. She was equally as sure of the spirits that now walked around her, sliding their icy tendrils through the shadows, slipping through the string of sunlight as the disappeared momentarily, only to appear right by her side. It was why she was cold all the time- a meagre sacrifice today see the ghostly presence of the dead. Polly was sure.
Heat prickled at her finger tips. The flames were so beautiful, like a dragon's breath, twirling brilliant oranges and reds against the light draft that she would never get rid of. It was almost like she could touch it, but Polly never did, no matter how much she wanted to.
The crackle of the fire was great enough distraction too. She didn't want to talk today- she hadn't for the last few days actually- and wouldn't want to form another week at least. There were too many faces in the room.
But none of them were that of her precious Sally Anna.
Polly was adamant that she was dead. How else would she have seen her that other week, so ethereal and enchanting, as if her daughter had been granted gods greatest gift upon entrance to heaven. Polly knew Sally Anna would have gone to heaven too- she was always a good girl when she was little,- even if she had been three when she was ripped from her cradle by those horrible men.
Polly didn't have the heart to tell Michael about his sister's fate. She didn't have the nerve to tell Ada or Tommy, nor John or Arthur for that matter. Every time she though about her darling daughter, she was reduced to sobs, muffled by whiskey and a cigarette.
Her Sally Anna was dead.
☾
Anna peered down to the newspaper that lay crumpled between her knees and chest. She was somehow tucked into a luggage cupboard between compartments, perched on a flat but bulky suitcase, her own still broken and leaning against the wall adjacent. The distant call of the conductor rung through the thin walls- the only bit of comfort that Anna could grasp for, as at least she wouldn't be able to miss her stop, with his abhorrent screech. Much like an owl's cry, she thought.
The 31st of March: that's what the paper read, and it had to be right, as she had pinched it from the deep pockets of an old man two compartments down from where she hid. It wasn't the date that made her stomach drop, but it was the nine whole weeks that had passed since her birthday. The size and age of the boat had slowed them down considerable, but to learn that she was at sea for almost six weeks turned the sludge of an oat biscuit that lay against the pit of her tummy.
Six weeks on a boat in the middle of the ocean was enough time to make her love it in a bizarre sort of way and for that period of time, it had felt like home. Now she wondered whether her family, her true home, were still as she faintly remembered. She wondered if they were still in Birmingham. If they were still alive.
Being seventeen felt no different. Like every year past, she wished to be just that bit older, past the age of eighteen where she could go and do whatever she pleased without being weighed down by the stares of the people who had taken her in the first place. They always treated her as a burden, it was obvious, and Anna often found herself questioning why they had bothered with her in the first place.
If there was someone above, it seemed that they only liked to acknowledge her wishes when it was to do with the weather. Perhaps they hated the English drizzle too, or maybe they pitied her enough to grant her something as simple as a somewhat sunny sky. But as she walked through lower Small Heath, she began to think that even that would be impossible. She could see no sky through the smog that suffocated the streets.
The men in the pub had laughed at her when she asked if they knew Polly Gray. The last name had been hard to push out and it took her multiple times to say it without a stutter. Anna hadn't used it in years. They never bothered to change her name.
The men laughed again when she asked if they knew where she lived, and laughed a last time when they answered her. She worried that they were lying, playing a terrible joke on her. She feared they were sending her some place horrible, that wasn't a place for a young girl like herself- she had heard of many disgusting stories of places like those from Josephine. But Anna went still, though with a lot more weariness resting on her tired shoulders. She knew too, that soon it would be her laughing, as she would be home with her family once again.
Watery Lane. The street name didn't echo through her memories as she though it would. There was no inkling of sweet remembrance dancing through her brain. Anna was left with silence as she walked down the side of the street, which was empty, save for the few children kicking a scruffy ball at the very end.
Her feet stopped automatically in the middle of the street. She turned her head.
Number 17.
Nothing stood out. There was no flicker of the curtains at the window as she stepped forward, only a foot away from the door. Anna's hand was raised, but she stood like that, knuckles pausing before they could hit down against the chipped wood.
Her family could be inside. This was it. Fourteen years she had been away from them, and now she had made it back. Back home. She didn't give herself time to debate their reaction, or whether they would even be there.
Anna knocked on her mother's door and waited for it to be opened.
