1.

I sat behind the counter of the shop, tapping the tips of my nails impatiently on the wood surface. We'd had almost no customers all day, and the smoggy Birmingham air flowing in through the open shop door was nearly choking me. My mother sat quietly, working to bring in the waist of a dress, ignoring my impatient noises.

The shop – my mother's business as a seamstress and sometimes tailor – was a front, insofar as it gave us a legitimate and hopefully unquestioned reason to be in Birmingham, to be in England at all. Of course there were Irish living in the city, Irish who supported the IRA and the freedom of their homeland; but it was necessary to pass along messages inconspicuously, to build a network, to do anything to help the cause along.

Personally, I was scared and elated to be seemingly in the center of all this action – my father had sent us over to England two years ago, when the war had started in earnest, saying we'd be better help out of the way. I longed to be home again in Galway, fighting for my country's freedom myself; at the same time, I was glad to be relatively safe in Birmingham, far from the turmoil. The two impulses were constantly at odds with each other, and clashed with every new bit of information that came out, every new act of violence. Things had settled down, but the fight was clearly far from over.

I was startled out of my thoughts by the polite, though somewhat impatient, cough of the man standing in front of me. Embarrassed, I sat up straight as quickly as I could, hoping my mother hadn't noticed.

"Yes, sir, can I help you?" I asked.

"I think you can." He was slightly intimidating, with a grey suit and cap, and a very serious, clean-shaven face. His slightly, but surely purposefully, unapproachable air made me instinctively defensive, and I raised one eyebrow with a little shrug.

"How, then?"

He didn't answer straightaway, instead looking around the little shop. It was small and cluttered but I refused to feel embarrassed; it was the best we could do, and I felt a small surge of power knowing the real reason we kept it up.

"I've a suit that needs tailoring." His voice, with its northern English accent, interrupted my train of thought again.

"We can do that for you."

"I'll bring it round tomorrow, then."

I furrowed my brow; most customers brought whatever needed mending with them. It made no sense why this man would waste his time coming to our shop simply to ask if we could tailor a suit when the sign in the window clearly said we would. Unless…

My heart dropped quickly. He knew. He knew it was a front, he knew we were doing something suspicious, even if he didn't exactly know what.

"Is that all?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady and my eyes on him.

He looked straight back at me, blue eyes boring into my own.

"Irish?" he asked, quite unexpectedly.

"Yes." Oh, God.

"Whereabouts?"

"Galway."

He nodded, taking another look round. "I knew an Irish girl. She used to work at my pub. Have you been?"

I was trying to analyze what he was saying, trying to figure out if he knew, and I was just confusing myself trying to keep up with the conversation at all.

"No, I don't think so. What pub?"

"The Garrison." Ah. I'd been by, but never inside; it was always rowdy, loud, too conspicuous and too many men looking for an unaccompanied young women, like me. I'd heard things, though, like that it was a run by a gang. Oddly enough, the fact that the man standing before me was possibly in one of Birmingham's most notorious gangs was a relief; it felt almost like we were both on the same side of the law, the wrong side.

"No, certainly not," I said with a small laugh, looking at my mother behind him; she was busy, lost in her work and completely ignoring us.

"Certainly?" He raised an eyebrow and gave a small smile. "Come round. We'll give you a pint for free. Tell them Tommy Shelby sent you."

I nodded, already planning to ignore his invitation. "All right, then."

Conversation ended, he turned to the door, taking in my mother bent over the dress in one glance before heading out the door. Something he'd said flashed in my mind briefly, and before he'd crossed the threshold I called out behind him.

"You know an Irish girl? Irish Catholic?" Maybe he supported us.

"Knew her." His tone was sharp. "And no."

I exhaled slowly, watching him walk down the street with a resolutely confident step as far as I could. No idea what to think of him; he was certainly not on the right side of the law, but I couldn't tell if he'd out a member of the IRA, even one who hadn't been back to Ireland in years and lived alone with her mother above a seamstress's shop. Maybe I should take up his invitation, a little voice said in the back of my head. Just to see what he's about.

"Who was that?" My mother was staring at him, too. I guess she had noticed.

"Tommy Shelby," I answered with a shrug. My mother shot a sharp glance at me; something had clicked in her mind, but she wasn't going to tell me. I could tell, as she carefully wiped her face of any expression. She'd learned to be careful, but she'd also learned that I could take care of myself, despite being only twenty years old. No need for coddling.

"Hm," was all she said, before getting up and shutting the shop door, placing the "Closed" sign in the window.

Two days later, and I still couldn't get Tommy Shelby and his strange visit out of my mind. Resolved to do something about it, I left the shop early on Wednesday and made my way to the home of probably my one true friend in Birmingham, Alice.

She lived in a tiny flat with her family, and we were afforded no privacy there, so we made our way to the cemetery. It was somewhat morbid, but I always felt peaceful in graveyards, and certainly nobody would be eavesdropping on our conversation.

"You know I hate it here, Rosie," she complained as we settled down, back to a tree and legs stretched out in front of us. I breathed in the relatively fresh air, feeling a pang of homesickness for the lush greenness of Galway, and shook my head in an attempt to clear it.

"Oh, hush," I reprimanded her, mock stern. "I have a matter of serious business to discuss."

"Do go on, then," she said, raising one light brown eyebrow over matching eyes.

I inhaled deeply, feeling like a silly schoolgirl asking advice about a boy. Well, I'm not, I told myself resolutely. I have to protect my family. My people.

"Do you know Tommy Shelby?" I blurted, immediately surprised when her face changed from an expression of mild interest to one of confusion and fear.

"Tommy Shelby?" she answered quickly. "Do you mean Thomas Shelby? Of the Peaky Blinders? Rosie," she said, grabbing my wrist tight, "why do you know the Shelby family?"

"Ow!" I complained, pulling away. "What the bloody hell are you on about? I don't know the Shelby family! Tommy—Thomas—came into the shop, that's all. He seemed a bit odd, maybe, I just wanted to know."

"Odd," she scoffed, shaking her head. "He's proper mad. They all are, the lot of them. You'd do best to listen to me know, Rosie O'Leary. Do not go anywhere near them."

I shifted uncomfortably; Alice knew me better than anyone in Birmingham, besides my mother, but she still didn't know why I was really here. Everyone thought my mother and I had moved after she left my father, and nobody asked any questions. Her hostile reaction to even the mention of a possibly criminal family made me think she wouldn't be so accepting if she knew my real situation.

"Right." I cleared my throat, nervously twisting a gingery red curl around my finger. "Well, I just wanted to know."

"I mean it, Rosie," she said again. "Stay well away."

We sat chatting for a bit, Alice telling me about a boy she'd seen on the street or how her sister was bothering her, but I suddenly just wanted to be by myself, so after twenty or so minutes I pretended I had a terrible headache and went home. Safely in the three-room flat over the shop, I opened the window wide in a futile effort to the get the air circulating and lay on the bed I shared with my mother. Tommy Shelby intrigued me; certainly, he was handsome enough, with his strong jawline and lovely blue eyes. But I didn't like his attitude, and I certainly didn't like the feeling I had that he knew we were up to something. And I hadn't completely dismissed Alice's warnings, either – I may have been part of the IRA, in some way, but I wasn't a full-fledged soldier fighting on the ground for Irish freedom. I just sat in a shop all day and sometimes relayed information between Ireland and England, decoding letters from my father and writing back in the same code.

Sighing, I sat up again, watching the summer sun dipping low towards the horizon, spilling beams of soft orange-yellow light over the industrial streets of Birmingham. Children ran, yelling, and men and women walked around, mothers calling for their children and men intent on business. Watching the sun fall behind the buildings, dimming the light on the city, I decided firmly to take Tommy Shelby up on his offer.

I had almost nothing to lose – I knew how to defend myself, if necessary, and I'd gone to far worse places in service to the IRA before – and I had to find out if he knew we were hiding something. I knew almost nothing about him besides the fact that he, and apparently his family, were involved in a gang, and I really owed it to my own cause to find out if he would disrupt our efforts.

When my mother came upstairs for tea, I had already put on my best peach satiny dress, with a black lace pattern from the waist down, and matching peach heels. She raised one eyebrow, smoothing back her hair. I had inherited my red curls from her, but my mother's were fading with age and mostly kept in a tightly pinned bun at the back of her head.

"I'm going to find out about the Shelby man," I said resolutely. She was a wise woman, and she'd never let me do anything recklessly dangerous; but she was a fighter, just like her husband, my father, and she believed in my own ability to watch after myself.

"Be careful, my love," she said mildly, already moving to put on the kettle. I kissed her on the cheek and swung the door shut behind me, ignoring the nervous churning in my stomach. I was good at passing messages, I was even good at threatening when necessary and carrying them out, as well, though it didn't happen often; but I couldn't help feeling nervous going to the pub of a gang member where I knew nobody and had no escape route.

I made my way through the streets, keeping my eyes focused on the ground and hoping to avoid notice as much as possible. Finally, I came to the Garrison. Taking a deep breath and surveying the area around the pub quickly to see where I might escape if necessary, I pushed open the door.