Sharon’s Comments (group member since Apr 26, 2016)

Sharon’s comments from the First Chapter group.

Zara-jo wrote: "I enjoyed this - marked To Read,"

Thank you Zara-jo! If you read it I hope you enjoy the story! I am interested to hear if you end up rooting for Helen King.

Crime fiction. Dark & Gritty Sharon BrownlieBetrayal
Chapter 1
The man slapped Helen hard across the face and grabbed her by the hair, throwing her onto the bed.
Helen could taste the blood spurting from her lip, and though she was aware he had slapped her hard, she felt no pain. She struggled to pull away and tried to curl her body into a ball for protection, but he was too strong for her. Helen was like a rag doll in his hands.
He easily overpowered her and ripped the clothes from her body. The sadistic bastard was enjoying her pain, especially when he penetrated her. He thrust into her so hard she cried out. Fortunately, he had no stamina, and it wasn’t long before his body slumped on top of her.
She pushed him away in disgust and jumped up from the bed. “Get out, Addie,” she screamed. “Get out.” Helen pulled a sheet around her naked, trembling body.
Addie laughed. “I’m not going anywhere until you give me what you owe me,” he said as he sat up on the edge of the bed and began to get dressed. “Now, where’s my fucking money?”
Helen licked the blood from her bottom lip. “That’s rich. The punters usually pay me, not the other way around.”
“But I’m not a punter. I’m your fucking pimp, and don’t you forget it, you little tramp.”
Helen knew what he had just done to her was a form of punishment because she hadn’t handed over his share of the money. She worked the streets, and he was her controller. She also knew one of his roles was to provide protection for her from others, but he wanted his share of her earnings. His expectations were always high. She held out a wad of notes.
Addie grabbed the cash from her hand and pointed his finger in her face.
“If you try to keep anything from me again,” he growled, “you’ll be fucking sorry.” With the threat hanging in the air, he walked to the door and slammed it behind him as he left.
*
Helen lay on the sofa feeling ill and sorry for herself. Since Addie’s visit to the bedsit over a week ago, she had decided her life had to change. She knew the first thing she had to do was quit heroin, so she had started to wean herself off the drug. It wasn’t going to be easy.
It was her fifth day, and she wasn’t coping well. In an attempt to take her mind off her cravings, Helen thought about the way her life was turning out. At the age of 20, she realised it was getting worse instead of better.
Her entire life revolved around drugs and prostitution. The more she prostituted herself, the more drugs she could score. It was a cycle she wanted to stop, something that had never been her choice in the first place. Sometimes Helen blamed it all on Addie, at other times she blamed some people from her past.
If I hadn’t run away from the care home to find Ash, I wouldn’t have met that bastard Addie!
Ash was an older boy Helen had befriended when they both lived at Cranston Hall. She had felt safe and cocooned in their relationship. Unfortunately, this had come to an end when he had left the home to live with a family somewhere in Gloucester. Helen had remembered looking for it on a map of England.
She was only 14-years-old when she ran away from the home. Addie had promised to look after Helen. The Good Samaritan. Instead, he had taken advantage of her and had helped turn her into the wreck she had become.
Gripping pains interrupted her thoughts as she felt her stomach doing somersaults. She made a grab for the basin at the side of her bed and heaved last night’s pizza into it. She groaned aloud as she felt the stomach cramps begin to take hold. Aches and pains were ravaging her body - and not for the first time. Her insides felt as if they had knotted together.
Feeling like shit, Helen thought a little hash might help her through the pain. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and rose up from the sofa. She frantically searched around. Helen hoped to find a bit she may have left lying around.
“God!” she cried out. “How the fuck is anyone meant to find anything in this shithole?”
What had once been a homely room was now a tip. When Helen had first moved in, she had cleaned it up. Over time, though, she had lost interest in it. Now, the bedsit looked worse than when she’d first set foot through the door.
*
Helen remembered the first time she had met Addie. He had promised her a palace, and she had ended up in his dirty bedsit. Addie had found Helen sleeping on a park bench, slap bang in the middle of Gloucester. It had been the day after she had run away from the care home in Edinburgh.
He had offered her a bed, and Helen had accepted. She had told him it would only be for the one night. Addie had to hide his smirk from her; he knew she wouldn’t leave. He was something of an expert when it came to grooming vulnerable young girls.
When she had entered the room and Addie had flicked the light switch on, Helen had regretted taking him up on his offer. A single naked bulb barely lit the room, and she had to draw in her breath because of the nauseating smells assaulting her senses. The stench, from rotting food, empty beer cans and dampness, had been overpowering.
Addie was right; Helen didn’t stay just ‘the one night’. Instead of moving on the next day, she had cleaned up the bedsit and took pride in it, but all her good intentions didn’t last long. Addie began to introduce her to hard drugs and groom her for prostitution.
Luring Helen onto drugs was easy, but he had to work harder preparing her for her life of prostitution. To begin with, Addie had a mate by the name of Pete Baxter rape her.
On several occasions, Baxter had beaten and raped Helen, before throwing cash at her. Addie would take the cash, using it to cover the cost of her digs and drugs. They treated her like a prostitute; until she started to believe it herself. It was a partnership the two men had mastered well in order to groom young girls. Addie dragged Helen into a dark, seedy world.
*
The cramping in her stomach was getting worse, and Helen began to rifle the room. She searched high and low, tipping carrier bags, emptying the drawers and lifting the corners of the bed. She left no place untouched, but it was all to no avail. Helen didn’t find a thing. The stomach cramps were getting worse. Her own body was punishing her.
“Shit! Shit! Fuck the hash.” She shouted aloud, there was nothing else for it. Helen decided she’d have to give her dealer a call. Within five minutes Helen made the call and within ten, she had dressed and arrived at the usual meeting place, a corner on Barton Street.
She snuck into a shop doorway and as she did, Helen caught sight of herself in the glass. She already felt a mess and her reflection confirmed it.
“I’m 20-years-old,” she murmured. “Shit, I look like I’m going on 40.”
The clothes she wore were old, shabby and dirty. The few decent items of clothing she possessed came from second-hand shops or stolen from people’s washing lines. Long gone were the days when she had sported designer labels like Vivienne Westwood and Diane Furstenburg. Items bought by her father to buy her silence. Whatever decent clothes she did have, Helen kept for her night work on the streets.
Helen peered closely at her reflection in the mirror. Her long auburn hair was greasy and uncombed; her complexion was deathly pale. She looked, and felt, terrible. The need for a fix was becoming stronger, and her body was beginning to scream out. She craved the rush, and she wanted it now.
“Bastards,” Helen said as she turned to the window and looked at passers-by. She believed everyone was staring in her direction, but they were oblivious to her very existence. Paranoia was one of the side-effects of feeding her habit. Helen huddled her slim frame further into the doorway, promising herself yet again that this was the last time she was going to score. It would be the very last time she would be hanging about waiting for a dealer.
Helen had been promising this to herself for six years since her second hit. By continually telling herself Addie had forced her into a life of drugs and prostitution, she convinced herself it wasn’t her fault. Most of all, she blamed her childhood abusers.
“When the fuck will I stop being a victim?” she whispered, as if voicing her concerns would help her solve her issues. Mentally, she continued to point the finger of blame.
It’s no wonder I’m messed up. If only they’d stopped Dad from abusing me in the beginning, I wouldn’t be here now. If only they had believed me and taken him away instead. Things would have turned out differently.
The more it preyed on her mind, the more Helen convinced herself it had been those who should have cared, but didn’t. They had caused her life to take such a dark turn. The longer she stood thinking about all those heartless and useless bastards, the deeper her hatred for them grew. Sometimes in the dead of night, she dreamt of the chance to get even.
*
Helen kept watching out for her dealer. Her eyes were darting anxiously from left to right, searching for him, praying for him to show up. She became aware of her own body trembling involuntarily as she moved out from the shop doorway to get a better look along the street.
She couldn’t see him, but she could hear a conversation between two women. They were standing somewhere behind her and not far away. Helen froze when she recognised the voice of one of the women. It was a voice she thought she would never hear again.
“Tina!” The woman called. “It’s so good to see you and just at the right time too.” The lady paused and allowed herself a little laugh. “I’m leaving for Scotland in a few days.”
Helen turned slowly to see where the voice was coming from; she didn’t have to look far. She matched the voice to a face that was still recognisable, even after maybe nine or ten years. It was the voice of her old English teacher: Miss Gloria Bryson.
As Helen stared at the woman, she noticed Miss Bryson hadn’t changed much since she’d last seen her. Her hair was still short and dyed blonde, and her clothes were as drab and dowdy as they had been years ago.
She wondered if Miss Bryson would recognise her.
“Shit,” she whispered and almost smiled. “Even my own mother wouldn’t recognise me now.”
The voice from her past overtook her need for drugs; she listened intently to the conversation.
“You’re leaving here, Gloria? Why?” The other woman asked.
“I have a new job. In a school in Edinburgh,” Miss Bryson said. “I start in a few weeks, but I need to furnish my new house first, so I’m going up there early.” She fumbled in her bag. “Here, I’ll write down the address for you.” As she wrote, she said it aloud. “Rose Cottage, Ferry Road, Edinburgh.”
The two women continued to talk for a few more minutes before going their separate ways. Helen felt a buzz. This woman was one of the people she would sometimes blame for the way her life had turned out, and Miss Bryson hadn’t even recognised her.
Helen smiled. She knew Edinburgh well, and she was confident she wouldn’t forget a name like Rose Cottage. For some strange reason, Helen felt for the first time that she was in control of her own life. Fate had dealt her many bad hands, but perhaps her destiny was not to end her days selling her body on the streets of Gloucester after all.
She told herself ‘knowledge is power,’ although she had no clear idea what she would do with the information she’d just overheard. She did consider maybe, just maybe, she might be able to arrange payback for Miss Bryson.
“Here’s your gear,” a voice said. The voice made Helen jump; it was her dealer. She paid for the drugs and hurried back to the bedsit.
*