thirty: epilogue - the end

Pinkish warmth rolled along the dipping slopes of the black hills and pooled in the heavy puddles made from the wheels of our wagons. I always bundled her in a thick coat and the booties that I had made for her, kissing her small feet and smiling at her delighted giggles, her chubby legs kicking wildly. She sat on my lap, still too small to understand that first shimmer of dawn. Her cheeks were flushed in a lovely pink, her dark-red lips stretched in a smile. The other Gypsy women told me that they had never known a baby to smile as much as Ruby did.

I watched the sunrise with her, like I did most mornings. Bonny Glen had not changed since my childhood. The horses stood in the same places that they always had, tied against a post with ropes trailing from huffing nostrils, their breaths blown in white clouds into the cold. I pointed at them, though there was no possible chance that Ruby understood just what I talked about in our own language, but I bounced her on my lap and delighted in her gurgling noises. I imagined that she talked back, that she was only telling me which horse she loved most.

"Your Daddy would have gotten you any horse that you wanted," I whispered against her cheek. She babbled, her fists bobbing. She placed one against her mouth and her fingers glistened in drool. "Anything you wanted."

In the distance, I saw the silhouettes of men emerging from the forest, dead rabbits slung over their shoulders. I glimpsed a familiar figure in the heart of them all, shorter and squatter. He saw me, too, and split away from the others, taking to the slope to reach me. When he finally did, he flopped onto the ground with his elbows balanced on his knees. He shrugged off his cap and held out his arms. I passed Ruby over to him and smiled when he peppered her red cheeks in kisses.

"Did your miss me, eh, Ruby?" Johnny asked. Imitating a cutesy voice, he talked back to himself, "Yes, I did, Johnny – I missed you so much!"

"You're as bad as I am," I snorted. "Pretending she can talk back to me."

"They understand more than you would think, chey," he murmured. He settled her back against his chest and played with her hands. "Are you better today, love?"

I felt a flush of shame that came in those patches around my throat. It had been a lonely month in London in that hospital which creaked and rattled and whined. I slept with Ruby alongside me, afraid that if I did not hold a hand over her chest that she would stutter in her breathing no matter what the nurses told me. I often wondered if it was a fear that that would happen to me, instead. Johnny had arrived at the end of the week and asked if I wanted to spend some time with him in Ireland.

He had heard what had happened to Alfie. He had held me whenever I cried.

"I'm better," I told him. "I'll spend another few days here and then I'll return to London."

"You should stay with your kin," he frowned. "You would be happier with us, chey. We'd help you with your little one, make sure you don't dwell on – …"

"Johnny," I interrupted wearily. "Please."

"I know, I know. I'm sorry, Willa. I only worry about you. I just – I want you happy. I want you both happy."

Johnny shifted and held out Ruby for me to take. I breathed in her scent and nestled her in my arms.

"Willa," he started, "Tom tried to contact me yesterday –…"

"And did you speak to him?" I asked sharply. "Because if you did, Johnny, I'll take my bags right now –…"

"No, love, I didn't. I told him that I was with my daughter and her child, and I wanted nothin' from him."

His words soothed the burning hurt and pain that swelled in my chest and I nodded, squeezing my lower-lip between my teeth. "Sorry."

"Don't apologise to me, chey. You're doin' what has to be done for you and your girl. But you'll always have me, no matter what. Here in Ireland, back in England – I'll be there, love, wherever and whenever you need me."

He leaned over and kissed my cheek, pulling back and smiling sadly before he stood.

"We'll take a walk down by the river later, eh?"

I nodded. He brushed his fingertip over Ruby's cheek. He hesitated and I felt it coming; those same questions, the ones that he always asked.

"What will you do about the house, Willa? Will you stay there or move?"

"I don't know," I told him; blown in white, into the clouds. "I don't know."

ii

But I did return to that house. It had never been the house that we had loved, for that house had been lost in some other war. I carried her in my arms, cocked on my hip so that I could pass between the rooms. I told her about each colour chosen for the walls, each piece of furniture. I showed her his favourite armchair as if she might know more about him just for having seen it, though she was still too small for all that. I showed her, anyway.

I sat in his armchair and felt it engulf me. I could not bring myself to visit the bedroom. It seemed too daunting to climb those stairs and crawl onto that bed which was much too large for me, now. Ruby was supposed to sleep in her own crib and the mere thought of that separation frightened me. But I had to be stronger. I never wanted my blueness to become hers. I stayed there for a long time with her, on that armchair. I stayed there until there was a knock on the door – and another and another, for I had ignored the first few that thumped into the emptiness of the house.

There was a tall, black shadow behind the door; black liquid, stretching upward and upward with every knock.

I stood in the hall with my daughter held against my chest, staring at that frosted glass, at that blob which moved and shifted, rapping and rapping with knuckles at our door until I thought the sound hit my skull like a bell. I approached in careful steps, shifting her away – just in case. I pulled at the latch and tore the door open.

If I had not been holding Ruby, I would have killed him.

Thomas Shelby stood in the threshold with his hands in his pockets and a cigarette on his lips as if the world bored him, though his pale eyes trailed toward my daughter and I saw them soften. For all his darkness, Tommy had always been kind to children.

"Hear me out," he said.

"Go, now," I hissed at him. "Get away from me and my child, Tommy – don't ever – …"

"Blue door. Mosaic windows," he said.

I drew in a sharp, wounded breath. "What did you say?"

"Blue door," he repeated calmly. "Mosaic windows."

He moved aside and tilted his head toward a car which sat on the curb in front of the house. He threw away his first cigarette and immediately started on another.

"Alfie left me with a list of things to do for you and your child. He didn't know that he would have a daughter, didn't know if you would stay here or stay in Ireland. I tried to tell Johnny that Alfie had left you some properties and more cash to keep you both afloat for the rest of your lives. He bought a house for you, Willa. He bought a lot of things for you. He told me to tell you those words, like a code. He thought you wouldn't trust me otherwise."

Although it occurred to me that it might have been some horrid trick and Tommy might have simply hoped to kill me – wipe out the last of the Solomons – I knew that that was not the truth, because I saw it in his eyes. Tom was blue and savage in his own way, but he was not like the other men we had faced in our lives together. It was not just that we shared some distant kin, but more that it was not in him to harm a woman and her child. I knew it.

Thomas Shelby had already killed me in another sense, anyway.

iii

It was the same winding road that I had once taken with Alfie, but its golden shimmer was lost on me. I held Ruby and worried about her being anywhere near Tommy. He radiated his darkness more and more, just like Esme had said, and I felt as if it choked me in that car. I spotted a familiar sign: MARGATE.

Tommy was silent, puffing on his cigarette like he always did. Eventually, he turned and said, "She looks like you," he said. "Just like you."

Ruby made a small noise and reached for my necklace again.

"Exactly like you," he murmured.

I shot him a glare. He only looked back out at that silver road slithering ahead of us.

iv

Poised on those cliffs, the house was made of a dazzling white that reflected the sunlight. I had seen it before, many years beforehand, when I stood on a pier with the Jewish boy whom I had always loved. He had spun me around in his arms and told me that it would be ours. I stepped into its hall and felt attached to it already, because it looked like the hall in our old house – the first house, Number Seventeen of Ivor Square. It felt as if we had been kids, then.

The front door had been painted with that beautiful blue we had dreamed about together. A pattern of mosaic glass lined it. I felt the first prickle of tears, felt the first lump in my throat. I was glad that Tommy had stayed at the bottom of the drive with his cigarettes and his sickly-sweet blackness. I wanted only light in this house.

And I showed Ruby what her father had done for her; for us.

The front-room was cluttered in books and furniture and our photographs. Beside the very first photograph of us taken together, he had placed our ketubah. I kissed my fingertips and touched its frame. Sheer curtains rolled against the breeze blown from the balcony. I heard the froth and foam of the ocean below. Seagulls swept by in great flashes of broad wings, swooping upward and upward until they fell back toward the waves. I saw boats there, too, drifting along. Tucked in the corner of the room was a sewing-machine which faced all that blue colour.

A note had been pinned against its rolls of fabric, which read: look in the drawer with the red mark.

I glanced around, catching sight of that red mark which was really just a shred of tape. I opened it, feeling my hands shake. Inside, I found so many letters bundled together in two different piles. The first pile contained the letters that I had sent him during the war bounded by a familiar purple sash. The others were addressed to our child.

He didn't know that he would have a daughter.

The very first letter, though, before all the others, had been made for me. I traced the letters of my name from his familiar scrawl. I scooted an armchair in front of the balcony and peeled back those curtains, so that all the sun in this world filled the room and filled me. I balanced Ruby on my lap, carefully taking off her coat and cap. She rested right in the crook of my arm, my feet pressed into the edge of a bookshelf to stretch out my legs. I unfolded the first letter for myself but found it hard to read through the tears.

He talked about those days of the factory and Bell Road, like he had in bed with me only a few weeks ago – about that Irish girl in his dreams. And he told me that he loved me. He was not a sap like all those other people who believed in Gypsy foresight – but he thought they had been onto something if they ever said that we were meant for each other. And then there came this small paragraph at the end, written neatly, though I had imagined it in his gruff voice with his accent cutting off endings.

I know you probably think that my grand revelation came from discovering that I was ill – and it was, in a way. But I was already thinking about leaving this game when I first heard that Tommy's wife had died. I spent many nights wondering what would have happened, had it been you who was killed. I wouldn't have made it back the way that Tom did. I would have done something stupid. But it wasn't you – it just could have been. That was enough for me, after what we had been through before. I asked Ollie to do a lot of things for me, to take care of things so you wouldn't have to worry about Cyril and the funeral and all that nonsense that comes with it.

I already knew that I wanted Margate with you. We had waited all this time. I asked myself why I couldn't just sell all that gold and rum, like you had always asked me.

And the truth was that I was afraid to do it – to give up on everything we'd built together. But what we built together was not the bakery, Willa. It was us, together. It was our house and our life and now our child. And I hope they did get all your parts. I told you they'd be better off for it, being like you. But I would have given anything to see them. I wanted to wait longer, see if I couldn't make it to the end. But I told you already: I never wanted you to wait around for me to die, never wanted you to become my nurse.

I bought you this house so you can start something even better for our child. I wanted to give you all those things we talked about – see, I was listening. I remembered everything. I hope you can be happy here, Willa. I hope that you don't let me bring you back into that blueness. You might have your bad days, I know. You might have days when you don't think you can do it without me. You can. You must. I'm still there with you. Just look at our ketubah and know it.

And I love you. I always loved you, my Irish girl from the factory, as much as I love our baby.

No more blueness from you – only from the ocean. Look out when you're sewing, look out when you're feeling lonely, look out when you need strength, and know it.

So, I looked up and knew it.

v

Two months passed in which I stayed alone in that big house with only our baby to talk to; I bathed her in the evenings, bundled her in a soft towel and gently kissed each finger that she held out to me. I dressed her in the best clothing that he had bought for her, folded in the drawers in her own bedroom. But I still held her with me while I slept, because I was afraid to leave her alone. I was afraid to be alone.

And I sat in that armchair in the mornings, with Ruby in my arms, and I read her his letters like he had asked me to do. I read every single one of them, even those that were meant for when she was older.

He told her about all the things he hoped for her, now that he was gone. He told her that she had the greatest Mum and she was loved more than she could yet understand. And if her mother was a little weepy for a while, that was all right. He told her to look at the ocean, too.

"'I want you to know both sides of your family'," I read aloud. "'Because you are Gypsy and Jewish and you should be so proud of it. Never let anybody tell you otherwise. If you turned out to be a boy, you throw a punch to anybody who says you shouldn't be proud. If you turned out to be a girl, throw a punch, too, and go for the Crown Jewels while you're at it, because your –…'"

"Your Mum would know all about that with them people what tried to keep her down for being who she was."

The floorboards creaked behind me. I felt those tremors in my hands again, that stuttered pain which clenched in my chest and made it hard to breathe. I looked at the ketubah; in the golden sunlight, its glass glinted and reflected the room behind me. I saw a silhouette, broad and hunched at the shoulders with a black hat tilted low over the brows. I heard the familiar padding of paws against hardwood floors and a slobbering whine, too. I stood shakily, still holding Ruby and afraid to turn, afraid in case I had truly lost it in my loneliness and my grief.

So, I stayed where I was, looking out at the ocean.

"And she never let them keep 'er down for long," he continued softly. "She always got up fightin'. She's the strongest person I know. She still is. And I'll always love 'er as much as I love our baby. Ain't that right, Willa?"

I turned.

"Willa," he whispered, "I will find you there in Margate and we will 'ave what we always waited for."