CHAPTER TWO:
GIRL IS A GUN

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WHEN, AS PROMISED, HELEN returned to the Garrison the next day, she knew almost immediately that something was amiss. The bar was crowded with men ready to attend the latest football game. Harry was at one end refilling a regular's glass while a pretty blonde woman Helen had never seen before was wiping down the counter as Helen forcefully stole one of the bar stools for herself. She seemed surprised to see someone like Helen Mavis — with her hair delicately curled and her lips painted red to match her dress — in a place like that, with the men giving her a wide berth all the while shouting about the Blues. A sentiment Helen shared seeing a woman working behind a bar, and excelling at it, no less. She tried to keep her face indifferent as she ordered her usual.

"That'll be two pounds."

Helen failed to hide her laugh. "You're new here, aren't you?"

It wasn't a question, but the woman nodded anyway. "I'm Grace..."

"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Grace," Helen slid two coins across the counter. "I'm Helen."

Just as Grace accepted the money, Harry appeared by her side with wide, terrified eyes. "On the house, Grace," he not-so-subtly hissed in the startled woman's ear. Helen bit back a smile as he turned to her apologetically. "I am so sorry, Miss Mavis..."

"No need to be, Harry," she replied. "You know I'm more than happy to pay."

At that, Harry laughed and shook his head. Helen sighed at his stubbornness. Once he was out of earshot, Grace watched Helen sip her drink with evident curiosity in her eyes. Helen stared back, a precariously plucked eyebrow arched as she waited for what she assumed would come sooner or later.

"I don't mean to be rude, Miss Mavis," Grace said at long last. There it was. "But you don't happen to be related to the Shelbys, by any chance..."

"So Harry's given you the lay of the land already, eh?" Helen huffed out a laugh. Her lips tugged into a smirk as she lit one of her cigarettes. Grace, to give her credit, tried not to seem startled by the action. "To answer your question, Grace, I'm not. I only knew them once."

"Oh?"

But Helen wasn't about to pour her heart out to a stranger. She merely downed the rest of her drink, held her empty glass out to the barmaid and said, "Same as before please." When Grace returned with a new glass, Helen handed her four coins. Grace hesitated before accepting them. "You don't have to tell Harry, but my drinks have been free for long enough."

Grace went to respond, but was interrupted by the sudden creak of the snug window opening. Helen's face almost immediately dropped when she recognised it to be Tommy, a few of the Blinders heard laughing in the background. She hadn't even realised he was in there...

Nel had loved Tommy for his small moments of affection — both the intended and unintended. He wasn't one for grand gestures, but Nel never minded. If anything, it was sweeter knowing he cared enough to remember the little things. How he always lit her cigarettes for her, and switched from Sweet Caporals to Camels when she told him that Camels were her 'new favourite cigarette.' Tommy certainly didn't think so, but whatever made her happy (she changed her mind in a week, as expected.)

How he used to take her dancing, and even with dozens of beautiful women around, he chose to look at her, to smile like she was the only one in the room. How his eyes always seemed to find her first no matter the crowd, just wanting to know she was safe, close. He never brought her flowers or shouted his feelings from the rooftops, but he remembered everything she said when it counted most, dreaming (albeit, rather naively) of a future with nothing but happiness for the two of them.

Even after five years without him, Helen knew how Tommy Shelby carefully displayed his affections. All it took was a single look at Grace Burgess— her blonde hair carefully coiled, her timid smile that lit up her eyes, the way she went shy from just his presence alone — and a brief flicker of interest formed. Gone before Grace was able to see it, but Helen knew from the very start how this would end.

She inhaled sharply. Tommy's eyes darted to her, then averted back to Grace.

"I need a bottle of rum."

Before she could make the same mistake, only this time with the man who put money in Harry's pockets, Harry abandoned a group of sour-faced men to hiss a pointed warning in her ear. Helen's smile returned as she picked up on the words. "Grace, whatever it is, it's on the house."

Slowly, Grace turned back to Tommy and asked, "A whole bottle?"

Helen had to give her credit. Not once did she waver under Tommy's stare. He nodded once, impatient, though still curious.

"White or dark rum?"

"Don't care."

Helen's drink was almost empty by the time Grace returned with Tommy's rum. She hesitated at the sight of it, but didn't stop as Tommy raised a brow, almost like he was challenging her to serve Helen first. Helen scoffed, sipping down the rest of her whiskey and waving Grace along. Grace handed him the bottle, though she refused the coins he placed on the counter with a soft, "Harry said it's on the house."

Tommy's face remained indifferent, carefully calculated even as Grace stepped back, unsure whether to wait for his dismissal or to take her own leave. Through the rowdy shouts of drunken men, Helen heard him ask, "Are you a whore?" Surprised, she coughed up a splutter of cigarette smoke that neither Tommy or Grace seemed to notice.

"Because, if you're not, you're in the wrong place."

With that, he walked away, and a flicker of emotion, hurt, appeared on Grace's face. She slammed the snug window shut, letting out a shaky breath and catching Helen's eyes. She winced at Helen's sympathetic smile, but there was something lingering there, bitter, like the drink she had stopped Grace pouring for her.

"I think I've had enough," she said, glowering at the snug window like she would somehow strike down Tommy Shelby with just her eyes alone. When Grace frowned, she forced out, "Thank you, Grace."

Grace nodded slowly, saying nothing while Helen wrapped her coat around her shoulders and stormed from the bar. The air outside was no different to that of the Garrison. If anything, the open sky seemed to suffocate her. She almost turned back, almost, when she forced her eyes back down to where John Shelby was heading right towards her.

"Nel," he cried. She was shocked to see him grinning at her. "About damn time you showed your face around here! Me and Arthur have been planning an intervention—"

"An intervention," she echoed, letting out a faint, cautious laugh. "I'm surprised you even know what the word means, John."

Was this some sort of trick? Was he about to cut her a smile with that cap on his head? Helen hadn't seen any of the Shelbys up close since that day at the train station — apart from Thomas, of course. She didn't know what they thought, but she knew Tommy had told them. She caught Polly watching her once, back when Helen went to Church, with those dangerous, cat-like eyes of hers, and knew. There was no going back in her opinion.

"Oi," John exclaimed at her insult, dramatically clutching his chest like he'd been shot in the heart. "Katie's real into reading right now. She has this word-of-the-day calendar on the fridge. Dunno where she got her brains from."

Katie — short for Katherine Helen Shelby — was John's eldest and only daughter with Martha. She would've been seven now. Seven, and already learning the meaning of words like intervention. It made Helen proud... as her ex-honorary-aunt.

"That's Martha's side, that is," she said, almost smiling when John's eyes flickered at the mention of his wife.

It had been months since he came home, since he found out she was gone, but the wounds were so fresh that Helen picked up on them with ease. John and Martha were always at odds, bound together only by lust and a child born at seventeen. But in some ways, they loved each other, and the life they were building. They had to have. Helen couldn't think of another reason to have four kids (one beautiful girl and three rowdy, trouble-making boys) with someone before you'd even hit your mid-twenties.

Just look at Helen. On her way to thirty with no husband, no children, and nothing but fear for her future.

"You should come over sometime, Nel," John suggested then, lowering his voice as a group of eager men pushed past them into the Garrison. They paused to mutter greetings to John, not once looking at Helen as he nodded them along. Once they were out of earshot, he turned back to the blonde woman and grimaced. "The kids miss you — Eddie's drawn enough pictures of you to fill a bloody wall, he has."

"I said it once and I say it again," she shrugged. "That boy will be an artist someday."

That boy was John's eldest son, Edward — Eddie — Shelby, two years younger than his sister and better with a pen and a sketchbook than any other five-year-old Helen knew. To John, art was a waste of time and Helen saw it in the way he scoffed — still, a flicker of pride came and went in his eyes, for the son he knew would achieve more than he ever could

"So what do you say, eh? You'll come over for dinner? Katie's also gotten a thing for cooking right now, and I—" he hesitated. Helen sighed, refusing to meet his stare. "I miss you too, you know. None of us are angry, even Tommy..."

"Don't, John." She couldn't, wouldn't, hear of it. The Shelbys liked to think they knew him, but sometimes Helen wondered if Tommy even knew himself.

"Why not?" he frowned, his jaw clenching in a way that reminded her of Tommy. God, everything reminded her of him. She hated it. "He still loves you—"

Helen's laugh was sharp but wistful. John, for once, wasn't oblivious to the pain behind the sound. He winced as she nudged her way past him, sinking into herself. "I'm not so sure he does."

"Nel, please—"

"I need to go, John," she insisted, refusing to meet his eyes. She stepped out of the way as he reached for her elbow, ignoring the sigh she heard fall past his lips. "Tell the kids I say hello."

It wasn't much, but it was something. John didn't stop her as she walked away.

Later, though, she wished he did. Perhaps they would've spoken a bit longer if he hadn't mentioned Tommy and love in the same sentence. Or maybe she would've accompanied him back into the Garrison, and whoever it was who was following her home might've gotten bored waiting around. But no one was around then. The streets were empty with all of Small Heath's men — all the good ones and some of the bad, at least — at the Garrison chasing the bottom of their drinks as they waited for the match to start. The second Helen heard the footsteps behind her, she knew she was in deep shit.

Slowly, she reached around to the back of her head, not once looking over her shoulder as she kept an even pace. Plucking her hairpin from her hair, she hummed carefully to herself as she combed her fallen bun around her shoulders with one hand, the other tracing the too-sharp edge of her pin with her thumb.

A long time ago, when Helen had first gotten involved with Tommy and the Peaky Blinders, he gave her this. For a while, she thought it was an ordinary pin, one of the few tangible gifts Tommy decided to buy for her during their courtship. It wasn't until a man bothered her outside the Garrison one day, and Tommy snatched the pin out of her hair to stab in the man's eye that she realised what its true intention was.

"Why didn't you tell me, Tommy?" She had frowned, later on that night, as the two of them sat by the fire, Helen with a cup of tea and Tommy with his rum.

Laughing into his glass, Tommy said, "It was only an extra precaution, love, for when I can't be with you."

At that, Helen had rolled her eyes. "I don't need protection, Thomas Shelby."

"No, you don't," Tommy agreed, much to her surprise, then leaned across the table to press a kiss to her lips. "But I'm giving it to you anyways."

She'd worn it ever since. She hadn't had to use it, but perhaps Tommy was right that day. He wouldn't always be around.

When the hands snatched her and dragged her down a dark alley, Helen was ready for them. She didn't hesitate to whirl around, shoving her knee into her offender's crotch. As the unfamiliar man groaned and leaned over, Helen didn't think twice before jamming the pin into his eye, evoking a scream as blood soaked his skin and her hands.

Behind her, the unfamiliar click of a cane on cobblestone drew closer right before a sharp sensation erupted in the back of her knees. Helen gasped, buckled, and landed beside the man struggling to remove her pin from his eye as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

"Impressive work, Mrs Shelby," a distinct Irish voice taunted. This new, still unfamiliar man shook his greying head, eyeing his lackey with a sense of disgust that didn't go unnoticed to Helen, even in the shadow of her kidnapper's hunched-over frame. "Just like your husband, I see."

"Tommy's not my husband." Her protest fell on deaf ears, the man raising an eyebrow as more footsteps followed him, holding her down as she tried to stand. Helen's heart lurched, pounding away in her ears. She could barely hear herself talk over the sound as she exclaimed, "Hey! What are you doing? Leave me—"

A cloth, a handkerchief of some kind, covered Helen's mouth then, muffling the scream that followed, the pleading sound of a wife calling for a husband who didn't exist. Helen's vision started to darken at the edges, but still her body fought, even as the man with the cane struggled to kneel beside her so they were at eye level.

"Not to worry, Mrs Shelby," he murmured, breath stale in her ear. He smiled sickly as Helen's eyes drooped, no longer fighting them. "We only want to ask you a few questions."

Helen didn't remember anything after that, just the fading image of a silver hair pin left behind in an alley.