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It had been months since he tried to kill himself. The family had tastefully named it the incident as some plea for normality. They said it was for him. They were lying. It was for them. They were so used to their immaculate image that the possibility that it could crack was more important to them than the man who made it and upheld it.
He held the glass in his hand tighter. The party, about raising money for something about something, was drawing on long. Tommy was sick and tired of it. He wanted to go home. He would rather sit for a week listening to Charlie's violin practice than spend another hour here.
As he scanned the room, the light from the chandelier moved from the people's faces. He blinked at them all and got hit with a sudden, overwhelming wave of distaste, of rage for every single person in the room.
They'd all stood in the main hall before the dinner, picking at plates of pathetic excuses for food. The plates were empty when they entered the dining room where everyone around him practically licked their plates clean.
Even seven courses weren't enough to satiate them, he thought as he placed his glass down and made his way to doors. They stood around and mingled, talking rubbish about shit that didn't matter. Gorging themselves while talking about horses to buy, dinners they were having or politics that only really helped them.
His family would've killed for this when he was a child. Hell, they had killed for this. So much blood on his hands, engraved into every wrinkle, to live in luxury and he wasn't even fucking enjoying it. People's lives ended so he could stand in a hall, at a dinner meant to help people, surrounded by snobs who didn't know what struggle meant.
They didn't know about all the adults telling them they were lucky to have meat guaranteed once a week, maybe twice if it was a good spell. They didn't know what it was like to see your mum staring too long, or shaking in her bed, or pulling her hair out as she laughed, empty and bellowing.
How about the stories Alfie told him? In their days in Margate, the days he jokingly said didn't happen. Stories about staying in his borough, tales told by the neighbours' kids of what happened to people when they left the Jewish part of Camden. The tales passed down by his parents or lessons learnt about pain, self-defence and what you defined as right and wrong.
Tommy stalked down the hallways and signalled for his coat, snatching it from the hand that gave it to him. The car pulled around but when it started toward his grand house, just like the ones they owned, he said to turn to Birmingham. He wanted his lungs to feel heavy with smog and smoke.