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“The next few weeks will be cold.”
“It’s Birmingham, mum. Every week is fucking cold.”
Michael reclined back in his chair. He threw his head back, neck craned upwards as it rested on the top of the chair. The lounge was dark, dimly lit by the single lamp and scattered, flickering candles. Michael kept his eyes on the slither of window uncovered by the curtain, just in case.
On cold nights he still felt the bullets in his skin.
Heels kissed floorboards. Polly snatched the glass of whiskey out of his hand, making sure to slap the upside of Michael’s head. “Don’t you swear under my roof.”
Michael rolled out the kinks in his neck. “Apologies.”
“You’re as insincere as your father was when it comes to those,” Polly downed the remaining whiskey. She lingered by the chair opposite Michael, tapping her nails against the tufted buttons. “I mean it Michael, the next few weeks will be cold.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Tommy and I have been thinking.”
That never boded well. “And?”
“And,” Polly turned to him. It wasn’t lost on Michael that she was looking at the same slither of window that he was. “You’ll need to pack warm clothes if you’re ever going to survive out in the scrub.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m driving you out tomorrow. You’ll be camping with Aberama Gold until this business calms down.”
Michael felt the bile in his stomach turn to ice. It hardened his eyes, his bite. “What the fuck, mum?”
“Under my roof, Michael,” Polly’s bite snapped back at his own. “Changretta and his men are still out for your head, especially after what I did. Even bringing you home for one night was a risk, but I couldn’t...” she closed her eyes and took a slow, steady breath. “I needed you here with me, just for one night. You’ve been in that hospital too long, Michael.”
“So you think the answer is taking me out to the middle of fu—” Michael swallowed it down, “— to the middle of nowhere, just to get dirt and moss in my stitches?”
Polly’s stare was unwavering. Michael felt his spine straighten. “Our people have survived centuries with that dirt and moss, no cut can’t be nursed by it. It’s time you healed where you belong, amongst the pine and clean air.”
“And this was Tommy’s idea?”
“It was mine,” Polly said. “Would it bother you if it was Tommy’s?”
Michael remembered the look on Tommy’s face in the hospital. The hesitation, the unspoken acknowledgment that the two of them were leaving something unsaid. Michael couldn’t know for sure that Tommy knew he’d lied. But Tommy knew, Tommy always fucking knew. It had to be some kind of revenge, even if it was his mother’s idea. Tommy never let an opportunity pass.
“He was worried, you know,” Polly sat down, her legs crossed and toes tapping. “When he knew how close they’d gotten to you in the hospital, he was worried.”
“He wasn’t worried for me. He was worried about what you’d do if anything happened to me.”
Polly raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps, but he does care for you in that strange way of his. You’re under his wing, and not a lot of people are allowed under there, Michael. He’s put a lot of time into making sure you’re fit for the company.”
“Tell him I’m flattered.”
“Tell him yourself.”
“We don’t speak outside of business, haven’t for a long time”
“And why do you think that is?”
Michael paused. “He looks at me differently, like he’s waiting for something to happen.”
Polly hummed. “He looked at me like that after France, like he couldn’t quite piece together the Polly he left and the Polly he came home to. I thought it was him that was the problem, but in the end I realised we’d both changed.”
Michael had the urge to squeeze the top of his cane. It was out of reach. He’d thrown it on the ground when he first sat down, the pull of his tired muscles unbearable. He’d barely resisted throwing it in the fireplace. Michael itched to see something break. That insistent, simmering urge for violence never seemed to leave, and only worsened after he met Thomas Shelby.
Michael always knew he’d been made wrong. It wasn’t until he first stepped foot in Birmingham that he realised it wasn’t him that was wrong, only his surroundings, the fences and green pasture. No emotion could be contained here, no feeling or festering, oozing wound. The only person that made him feel whole was his mother, and even that seemed to be tested as of late.
“He sees something in you,” Polly said. “Always has, and you know it too. It’s why you’re still here, after everything.”
“I was under the assumption that had something to do with you.”
“Of course. Though, Tommy ultimately does what Tommy wants,” Polly lit her second cigarette of the night. “God knows I’ve tried to straighten his path to hell.”
Michael doubted the devil himself could rid the earth of Thomas Shelby.
“I’d stop trying.”
“Oh, I have. I never seem to get very far.”
The conversation lulled. His mother continued to smoke. Michael continued to sit. He thought long and hard about his last discussion with Tommy, unable to get that heavy feeling out of his chest. It stuck behind his teeth, gummy and persistent like lard. He couldn’t help but think he’d made the wrong call, even though he knew it was right.
He’d always choose his mother over Tommy, even if it killed him.
Michael saw Tommy’s eyes behind his own. Blue and cold, unforgiving as ice water. “How’d you get him to stop looking at you like that?”
“I didn’t. You can’t, not forever. Even when you think it’s gone and you’ve bested him, it comes right back,” Polly took a long drag. “You’ll see.”
“I don’t.”
“He’s a reader, he’s always had a gift with people,” she looked back out the window, at the crackling lantern light and whispering shadows. “People are pages to him, their words ink. He’s always struggled with me, and with himself. Now, I believe he’s struggling with you.”
Michael wanted to laugh. “Tommy Shelby is struggling with me?”
Polly’s own lips quirked. “He sees me in your eyes, he sees himself in your tongue. You underestimate how much you get under his skin.”
Michael felt a flare of pain in his shoulder. He breathed harshly through his nose for a moment, wondering which ghost was poking holes into his wounds. He wondered if it was Tommy himself. “I think he understands me well enough,” he said.
“Well then, if you’re so sure...” Polly allowed herself a grimace. “Just worry for the day he gets sick of you, Michael. It’s not a day I’m looking forward to.”
“I know the ins and outs of his legitimate business,” Michael reached for his own cigarette. The click of the lighter was harsh in the quiet. “He can’t get sick of me.”
Polly regarded him with a long, complicated stare, her eyes shiny and reflective in the lamp light. Michael's spine straightened all over again. “That,” she said, “is what I’m worried about.”
Michael exhaled a cloud of smoke, unwilling to admit that same worry was creeping into his own mind.
“If it’s any help to you,” Polly stood, “he does stop giving you that look when you do what he says.”
Michael frowned. “How has that worked out for you?”
Polly’s grin was full. “I told you, Michael, I know the look, all too fucking well.”
She closed the distance between them, her body blocking the light, sheltering him from the window and from the world. It was just the two of them in that room, perhaps as it always has been, always should’ve been. Would be, if they ever made it out of the filth and to Australia like they planned.
Michael took another drag. “It’ll be fine, mum.”
Polly ran a hand through his hair. “You say that,” she hummed, “I’m sure the spirits know otherwise. They always know.”
Michael bit his tongue. Fuck the spirits, he wanted to say. Instead, he mumbled, “It’ll be fine because we’ll make it so. We can’t let this family control us forever. We make our own choices, spirits and Shelbys be damned.”
“You have my blood running through your veins, Michael,” Polly took his cheeks in her hands. They were softer than he recalled, a scar on her right palm. “You are both Shelby and Gray. You are mine, and you are a prince.”
When Michael closed his eyes, he saw icy blue.
A prince. Michael disagreed. I am a dead man walking.