Sometimes it seemed as if Birmingham itself was breathing. The city panted through the smoke from the chimneys, the din of the streets, the whispers from the sewers where wet rats slithered across the bricks.

Every day brought different dirt, different scratches. But since you were carrying a child, everything had become sharper. Louder. Every sound cut through you like barbed wire. Your belly bulged clearly under the thick coat, despite the layers of material there was no hiding it. Not here, not from these people.

A pregnant woman who was still a member of the gang was a paradox that had to be accepted. No one said anything, but everyone knew. You were carrying Thomas Shelby’s child and that made you untouchable, even though no one ever said the word. Everyone knew you had been with them for a long time. Too long to be seen as a passing fling.

You came to meetings, you sat quietly, you listened. Sometimes you answered. You could look even the biggest of them straight in the eye. There were grease marks on your fingers, and more scratches on your heart than Tommy had on his mind. But no one was jumping at you. But now you moved slower. Your body demanded care, though your heart was still ready to fight. The baby kicked. Sometimes, in the deepest moments of silence, when you sat at Thomas's desk, hearing his conversations with Arthur, with John, with the politicians, through the door.

Sometimes, when it rained and you stood on the threshold, leaning against the bricks, feeling the cold trying to get under your skin then you felt the kicks too. A small reminder that you were no longer just yourself. You carried a burden heavier than other women. Not just the baby, but the whole world that Tommy had built brick by brick, corpse by corpse. His hands were red a long time ago, but his gaze softened around you. Rarely. Just for a moment.

But you saw it. Sometimes, when you sat in the corner of Garrison with a glass of tea, the women from the street looked at you with a mixture of fear and curiosity. Like you were somewhere between a lady and a curse. Pregnant and unmarried, but with a gaze that could stop a man in his tracks. A face that didn’t ask for forgiveness. Arthur once said you reminded them of Birmingham hard, smoky, and yet unyielding. You nodded, not laughing.

Because there was something true about it. You had grown with this city. And like it you were dirty but indestructible. You didn’t speak of the child out loud. Or of the fear you carried in your bones. That the world he would come into wouldn’t be for him. Untamed fear, a fragile woman who has been through too much to worry so much about pregnancy.