MABEL GRAY DIDN'T MAKE A SOUND when she was born, her mother, her father and grandmother waited with bated breath for the little girl's cries to fill the room. It was what they'd expected, a sign that the baby was alright, despite how heartbreaking a baby's tears were, there was no greater relief than that sound.

When Mabel's mother was born she had wailed for thirty minutes until she settled in her mother's arms, swaddled in a knitted blanket that kept out the cold and kept her safe each night. 

Mabel had been a quiet child, she never asked for much, she rarely cried, but when she did, the world and his wife knew about it. Her laugh was a delight, and as a little girl, her older cousins would find any excuse to make her laugh and smile, it was infectious.

She had hazy memories of those earliest years, but her clearest most fond memory was during the height of summer when she was shy of four years old. The circus had come to town when her youngest sister was just a baby and her mother felt herself riddled with guilt keeping her two young children cooped up in their small house while she tended to the infant.

So with a few shillings between them, the three eldest Shelby boys took it upon themselves to take both Mabel and her younger brother, Michael down to the circus. Michael had been sat upon Arthur's shoulders and Mabel upon Tommy's, squealing in delight when she laid eyes on the big top.

But being Shelbys, the three boys had little intention of spending so much as a sixpence on their day out. They slipped into the field through a gap in the fence, weaving their way through the crowds of people until they reached the tent. John, the youngest of the three brothers found a gap in the tent's fabric, allowing the five cousins to sneak into the tent undetected.

Few people except Tommy, Arthur and John remembered Mabel's smile that day, but everyone remembered her tears the day the Parish took the three Gray children from their mother, from their family.

She may have been a quietly content child, but she cried until her throat was raw the day they pried her from her mother's arms. It was harrowing for all to witness, for the cousins who hadn't spent a day without those children since they took their first breaths, for the three children who were piled into a car without the possibility to be cradled by their own mother one last time, for the mother who crumbled to her knees in the middle of Watery Lane, muttering the same words repeatedly.

"My babies, my babies, my sweet, sweet babies."

Her family tried and failed to pull her from that spot as her neighbours watched on as though it were some kind of spectacle. It was only when Arthur's voice echoed through the street, "Show's over, be on your way," that the neighbours slowly retreated into their houses as the Shelby boys gathered the pieces of a broken woman, broken perhaps beyond repair.

Polly Gray didn't utter a word for the seven days that followed, she barely left the four walls of her bedroom, where she cradled Mabel's rabbit teddy that Tommy had won her at the summer fair. Mabel didn't dare go anywhere without it, and yet the Parish workers wouldn't even let Polly close enough to give it to her little girl.

As the oldest sister, Mabel felt a responsibility to look after her brother and sister, despite only being seven years old. But in yet another act of cruelty, the siblings were separated, little Anna was taken to live with a couple who'd struggled to have their own children and wanted a baby of their own, a child taken from her mother who would only have the faintest memories of her mother's scent and her sister's laugh.

Michael and Mabel were lucky, that's what the lady had told them as she drove them through the quaint village. "You're lucky this lady's going to take you both," She'd told them as though it were something to be grateful for, as though she had done them a favour by taking them from their family.

The house that was supposedly their new home felt hollow to Mabel as her little brother clung to her. Their new 'mother' offered them both a biscuit as the children stared back at them blankly. They weren't the first children she'd taken into her care, the children who Mabel and Michael would be encouraged to call their brothers and sister watched on as the two little ones cowered together.

The years that followed weren't the easiest, Mabel and Michael were both quiet children, who's minds often wandered someplace else, someplace darker.

When Mabel was ten and Michael turned eight the woman who took the place of their mother, Rosemary told the children that their birth mother had been in no fit state to raise them, that she'd been a drunk and an addict, that they were better off there.

Michael's memories of home were hazy, so he was less tentative in accepting this version of the truth. Mabel's memories were vivid, and she fought Rosemary on the matter dozens of times, reminding her that she'd never be her mother.

Mabel considered it worth the slap around the ear.

She may have been willing to defend her family's name, despite her memories of them being faint, but as she grew from a little girl to a young woman it was her stillness that remained her power. She was the gentlest soul in any room she entered, but even a heart as docile as her own could be easily untamed.

MABEL GRAY
THOMASIN MCKENZIE

BOBBY MOSS
TOM GLYNN CARNEY

HAZEL MOSS
TAMSIN EGERTON

JACK BURTON
JACK O'CONNELL

EDWARD COLLINS
ANTHONY BOYLE

FEATURING
MICHAEL GRAY - FINN COLE
POLLY GRAY - HELEN MCCORY
THOMAS SHELBY - CILLIAN MURPHY
JOHN SHELBY - JOE COLE
ARTHUR SHELBY - PAUL ANDERSON
ADA SHELBY - SOPHIE RUNDLE
SERGEANT MOSS - TONY PITTS
VIOLET MOSS - ANNABELLE APSION
& the rest of the cast as their respective characters

disclaimer: I do not own the storyline or characters from peaky blinders. I do own my original characters and their storylines <3

trigger warnings - potential triggering themes that appear in this story include but are not limited to: violence, emotional abuse, mental trauma, sexual content (implicit).

author's note: hey! I'm back with a peaky fic!
I've missed writing the shelby family and felt like it would be so interesting to delve beyond into the family dynamic of polly and her children.
I hope you enjoy the fic and I'm looking forward to see where this goes!
most importantly, please enjoy this fic and let me know your thoughts...i love to read the comments on my fics <3
you can also find me on tiktok: sweetfreakrry