Tessa Bridie never belonged in the 21st century and after finding a photo album in her grandmas attic from the 1920s, she is catapulted 100 years into the past and into a life she never should have had.
Thomas Shelby/OC---matured themes and subject...
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It had been 2 weeks since I had been thrust into this life, this life that was mine...but wasn't.
I had begun to learn more about this person I had become and more about life in 1920. I had moved to small heath when I was 5, my father was an alcoholic who had died, and my mother couldn't cope so she gave me to Polly Shelby, the women next door and then she ran away, I had never seen her again.
Polly also had to look after the Shelby children, Arthur, Thomas, John, Ada and Finn. Even though I couldn't remember her kindness or anything about this childhood I had had, I was grateful for what this woman and what she had done for me...or for the other Tessa.
But one thing that I hadn't been prepared for, was my apparent relationship with the second eldest brother, Thomas Shelby. We had been friends since childhood, together every day and then naturally, apparently, we just fell in love...
This became the most difficult thing to adjust to, not just my relationship I had with Tommy, but the individual relationships I had with the entire Shelby family and how different they all were. but my relationship with Thomas was by far the most confusing.
I couldn't begin to describe to anyone how strange it was for someone to love you, but you had no idea who this person really was. I had a feeling, a stranger sense of remembering that I knew Thomas Shelby, and he knew me, but I truly had no idea who he really was.
After a few days I then I began to learn more about the Shelby's and how they earned their living and I only had one word to describe them, gangsters. In a dark corner of Birmingham, they dealt in illegal betting and held a reign of terror over Small Heath and the surrounding parishes. They had control of the local police, and local people alike, they lived dangerously, and now I was one of them.
My knowledge of the early 20th century was poor and I struggled to understand what state the world was on in 1920, I only really knew that the first world war had just ended and the world was still struggling to move through this and also what I had learnt from watching Great Gatsby...not the best source of information I know...
Considering a few weeks ago my life was extremely normal and boring, this was an insane amount of excitement but I spent most of my days with Polly, listening to her tell me about my life, my history, friends and family...and of course Thomas. The weird part was that some of the stories she told me rang a bell, as if I had in fact lived them.
I hadn't told them that I wasn't really the Tessa they knew because...well...I wasn't sure who I was at this point. As the days began to drift by I realised that this may be my new reality and memories would come pas through my mind, days and events I had never lived, but the more days passed, the more I began to feel that I was in fact at home.
"Tommy worships the ground you walk on." Polly said one afternoon over tea. "He's so worried about you...are you beginning to remember things?"
I just sat looking at the floor. I didn't really talk that much, to me these people were strangers, despite our 'history'. I mainly just sat and listened, learning about myself, learning how to act like the Tessa they knew.
