CHAPTER ELEVEN:
WEDDINGS & FUNERALS

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

THE CITY OF BIRMINGHAM HAUNTED Helen Mavis' dreams. The root of her worst fears, it followed her to London, a looming threat in the back of her mind that Helen could never escape. Birmingham was like purgatory; that hopeless state between life and death where there was no end or beginning in sight. Just an eerie... nothingness, a numbing of the soul. The calm before the almighty storm. Returning to it felt like a fever dream, a hazy delirium where sinners became saints. Cathartic in every sense of the word.

Helen Mavis, now Godfrey by name, was a stranger in her old skin, operating foreign bones that over time had become unfamiliar to her, breathing through battered lungs. No end to her beginning. Birmingham — more specifically, Small Heath — was as gloomy and smoky as ever. The whole city seemed to hold its breath on the morning of her arrival. A thousand eyes peered through blinds and around street corners, caught ablaze by her distinct blonde hair, pale-faced as if she was a ghost in the flesh. They lingered curiously on the toddler that clung to his mother's hand, narrowed at her slowly growing stomach beneath her fitted dress only to widen upon noticing the man on her arm.

The whispers... they were nothing new. Helen didn't think to pay them much attention. She should've. Godfreys did not like to play the fool. She should've known better. Old bones be damned.

The corner house on Watery Lane was as she left it. The windows were shut tight, a fine layer of dust gathered on the furniture. When she moved to London, Helen had every intention of selling her place of memories. But when she found Patrick and he promised her a life of comfort in exchange for a marriage vow, she couldn't help but hold onto one final piece of her past. Patrick hadn't minded, thinking nothing of it, and it worked out well for them now.

Helen ushered James over to the carpet in the living room, the faintest of smiles touching her lips as he ran around on unsteady feet. James Godfrey was a boy who was eager to explore. He thirsted to learn everything there was to know, refused to settle until he had what he wanted. It was a pain at times, but Helen adored her smart boy. He was much like his mum — or as Patrick liked to joke, their bright-eyed boy was four going on forty.

"He'll be alright here?" Patrick murmured as he surveyed the room with thinly-veiled wariness. He seemed out of place beside the plain beige settee, dressed in pressed black slacks and a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

Helen rolled her eyes at him; once fond, now merely indulgent. "Yes, Patrick. It's not like I kept knives in the upholstery."

Patrick grinned, affectionately tapping the base of her chin with his finger in the hopes of seeing her own lips twitch. "I never know with you, my love. You had a knife strapped to your thigh beneath your wedding dress."

"Alfie was in attendance," Helen said, as if this was enough of an explanation. "But oh how you flatter me."

Patrick chuckled, pressing a chaste kiss to her lips before retreating to their new bedroom with one of Helen's many suitcases. They'd taken the car with them to Small Heath, and every so often, Helen would peer through the curtains to make sure the vehicle still had its wheels and doors intact. No one dared to come near it, though she caught a few onlookers ogling the sleek black hood.

She turned away when James called out 'mama!' in that indignant tone of his that indicated he wanted a playmate. Kneeling beside him, she was surprised to feel so melancholy. He was holding a battered but nonetheless beloved teddy bear gifted to him on his third birthday by Florence, Frank's widowed wife. Helen had accidentally discovered her in Birmingham not a month after James was born. Living in a small apartment with Frank's three children and her new husband, a man named Ollie.

How interesting it was that Alfie Solomons, Patrick's... colleague... happened to have an assistant named Ollie. From that moment on, the dots now connected, Helen saw more of Frank's family than she'd ever intended the day she got Florence's letter. It hurt at first, but over time the grief became an echo of sadness she could never quite comprehend. It came in flashes every so often, and this happened to be one of those times. Watching her own son cling to his bear, Helen could picture his cousins on either side of him, three perfect replicas of her late brother. James adored them like she once adored Frank, even naming his bear Frankie after Francesca 'Frankie' Mavis, her youngest niece born just two months after the death of her father.

"Does Frankie like his new home, Jamie?" Helen asked as he sat the bear down in an armchair like it was a throne.

James looked around then, as if he hadn't really noticed where he was yet, then sneezed in a thick cloud of dust, seeming positively confused. "He says it's a bit dusty, mama."

"Oh, Frankie says that, does he?" Helen couldn't help but laugh, ruffling James' dark blonde hair when he merely giggled. "Well, don't you worry. Da's going to have this place spotless before you know it. You'll be able to eat food off this chair and everything!"

In response, James just wrinkled his nose, looking the armchair up and down before gingerly taking Frankie the bear back into his arms. Helen smiled and kissed his head, deeming it safe to leave him for a second. Checking that the front door was firmly locked, and that the car was still out on the road, she disappeared into the bedroom where Patrick had cracked open the window. Cigarette in hand, he was leaning up against the wall, idly watching a storm settle on the horizon. He looked surprisingly at ease, but Helen couldn't help but notice the little things, the parts of himself he'd started keeping from her.

Her husband was a man who liked to work. Some days, he wouldn't even come home from the office, falling asleep in front of a stack of papers and paying the price with a stiff neck the following morning. Helen had gotten used to this, but for the past few weeks, something was... off. He was tired every waking moment, his face gaunt and pale. He could've slept for a whole week straight yet Helen feared it would change nothing. That working so much and trying to raise a family with her had drained the essence of him.

(She desperately hoped it was that and nothing more. At least he smiled when she wandered over to steal his cigarette from him.)

"A beautiful view, isn't it?" she joked, blowing smoke at him when Patrick kept his gaze locked on her face instead of the window.

"Oh, just gorgeous," his eyes dipped to trace her figure. "Divine, even."

"I'm already pregnant, Patrick," she deadpanned and was relieved when he laughed at her, lighting up a fresh cigarette when Helen refused to return his. It sat perched between her fingers, fogging up the glass she leant against. "Don't get any impossible ideas in your head."

"Am I not allowed to admire my wife, the key to my heart?" he asked.

It was an innocent question, and he's said as much before, but something in Helen always seemed to freeze, caught off guard by the gritty feeling of resentment that festered in her chest. Maybe it was Small Heath and its reminders, or the way her heart faltered even then, but Helen's skin crawled until she couldn't take it anymore.

It wasn't that she didn't love Patrick. She did. Just not in the consuming, life-ending kind of way she once believed a wife should love her husband.

As she once loved another.

"We should be getting ready," Helen mumbled, putting out her cigarette in an old pot plant she'd let die on the window sill. There were dozens of burn marks already engraved into the wooden beam below it; some made by her, others by the company she kept. Turning away, she smiled and tapped Patrick on the chest. He closed his eyes for just a second. Her worried gaze darted to the dark purple bags that dipped to his cheekbones. "We have a wedding to attend."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

WHEN FLORENCE FELL PREGNANT for the first time, Helen's mother told her that childbirth was God's greatest gift. That life before her baby was born and life after were separated into two distinct parts; girlhood and motherhood. Girlhood was an innocence of nature, a sense of selfish indulgence that motherhood could not afford.

With fatal, fatal love; a girlhood goes.

Motherhood was the greatest sacrifice a woman could make, the only true chance to show God that your life was his to rule. Elizabeth Mavis' own life had been empty, joyless, until her babies were born. God had given her Frank — and Helen, by extension — in exchange for suffocating the last pieces of the girl she once was.

Helen found this almost laughable.

But in some ways, her mother was right. She often wasn't, but Helen's girlhood was a chapter that closed the day James was born. He was no sacrifice, no reason for the maiming of the girl she was, but he was the greatest gift God could've possibly given her if He was indeed out there somewhere. The fear of failing James, of failing herself, paled in comparison to the fear that time on the mortal coil would never be enough for her to love and cherish him.

Helen would do anything to keep him from harm.

And so it goes. Girlhood.

"Should we tell your parents you're pregnant again?" Patrick had asked one morning back in London. Helen couldn't quite call it home even then; their manor was triple the size of her Watery Lane house and emptier than the hearts her parents claimed to carry in their chests. "Florence said they're coming to visit for Frankie's birthday. Wouldn't you like James to know at least one set of his grandparents?"

"No," Helen refused without a second thought.

Patrick didn't — couldn't — understand. His father had died in 1918 of Influenza. In life, Patrick described him as a spirited man; disciplined but loving. He cared for his children and his late sister's daughter like they were his own. His mother lived in Ireland, a sickly elderly woman whom Patrick's younger brother and sister and their extended family looked after. She sent packages and letters for James each month, but that was as much as he knew of her.

"It's better this way, Patrick," she had said. "My whole life, I came second to my brother. I won't have James feel that way. Not with us, and certainly not with my parents."

She knew Patrick was biting back a retort. She'd heard it before. Florence lets them see her children. Even though she's married to Ollie now, and Ollie's parents adore them like their own. She doesn't hold her kids over their heads like you do.

Frank's sons and only daughter were the pride and joys of Lawrence and Elizabeth Mavis. They were a way for them to cling to their dead son, to restart their failed attempt at a family. Helen — and through her, James — would be a mere afterthought.

"Whatever you say, Nel."

So it goes again.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

THE WEDDING WAS THE whole reason they were in Birmingham. Patrick had a cousin on his dad's side — the only daughter of his dad's late sister — who was marrying a businessman with a big house just outside the city. The reception was to be held there later in the day, an... interesting celebration between the redcoats of his cousin's father's side and the groom's gritty, lower-class-on-the-rise family. Helen didn't think anything of it. Plenty of people in Small Heath used to be poor and had made a name for themselves. She had no reason to worry, to even think for a second she was walking into a trap.

They travelled to the church by car; Patrick with his tired eyes, knuckles bone-white around the steering wheel. James curiously watched the passing scenery from his mother's lap, small fingers playing with the folds of the dress she'd chosen for the occasion. It was a pretty red number that Patrick had jokingly said she matched to her lipstick. In response, she had kissed him so the red stained his mouth too.

"We're going to be late," she watched Patrick's pocket-watch with meticulous eyes.

"It's fine," Patrick shrugged dismissively at her concern. "We're nearly there."

Helen shot him a pointed look as soon as they pulled into the yard and the church bells started ringing. Patrick grinned, indulgent, and took James into his arms so Helen could wrap her mink coat around her shoulders. Together, they marched for the church doors, slipping inside without anyone sparing a second glance in their direction. The carpeted floor muffled the click of Helen's heels, and she was too busy watching her step as Patrick lead her to the bride's side of the room to really look at the couple that stood front and centre.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join together in holy matrimony Thomas Michael Shelby and Grace Helen Burgess."

Oh.

Oh.

Helen forgot how to breathe.

In the early days following her departure, she thought of Tommy everyday. As she laid beside Patrick in the bed they now shared, as the days before James' birth dwindled into nothing. With her son in her arms, green eyes staring up at her, she cried and buried Thomas Shelby in the shallow grave her mind could conjure. Never again did she think of him.

But now...

Just like that, everything came rushing back.

His back was to the crowd but Helen didn't need to see his face. Beside him, their hands intertwined between them, Grace stood in a dress of soft purple, a lacy veil trailed behind her. Patrick's cousin. A fallen angel in the flesh.

Helen glanced at her husband with a stomach clenched with dread, and something very close to hatred. Patrick didn't look at her — though he did have the decency to look ashamed, head bowed and jaw clenched.

He had known. It was him who opened the invitation, mentioning it in passing over dinner so that Helen wouldn't think much of it. Like a fool, she'd followed along mindlessly. The wedding invitation was forgotten. It was only James sitting on the pew between them now that kept her from losing herself. She squeezed his hand, smoothed his hair back from her face when he looked up at her with a gap-toothed grin. Grounded herself. She did not look Patrick's way again.

And away it went.

The last of her girlhood.

Just like that.

Tommy Shelby's blue eyes never noticed her once.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

A/N: So I hinted at this pretty early on. The scene back in the Dying Light chapter when Patrick and a mystery woman talk at the Garrison is actually Patrick and Grace. He was in town visiting her when he heard that's where the Crown had posted her. He's from Ireland, and Helen never met any of his family... need I say more lol? The official relationship connection is between their parents. Patrick's dad and Grace's mum are siblings. That's why he's technically not a Burgess, and why Helen never caught on. Grace and Tommy, though... they knew what they were doing when they invited them.

Anyways, apart from this bombshell, what did y'all think of the chapter? It took me ages to write lol, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how I wanted to introduce Helen's family. But here it is! She and Patrick are married, James — her baby from season one — is now four-years old, and at this stage in the story, she's about three months along with their second kid. I already adore this little family so much and can't wait for the angst I have in store for them ;)