My first Moulin Rouge fic! It's my favourite film along with Chicago. This is all about Marie's childhood, written from her POV. In case you didn't know, Marie is the older woman who helps Satine when she's ill, and who I think, please tell me if I'm right or not! is Harold Zidler's wife? If not officially...still... Anyway, on with the fic! Just a little intro here...
I was ten when I came to Paris, old for my age, hardened by the gradual demise and death of my father through drink. My mother was a dressmaker, terribly poor, but always convinced to make the best of things. She married my father when she was just sixteen, and he was twentythree. He was a violent, vicious man, who drunk too much, and took everything out on my poor Maman. He would regularly beat her, coming home late in the evenings and never telling her where he'd been. They didn't know I watched them, and my father wouldn't have cared. He used to hit me, too, whenever I was within arms reach, so I learnt to scuttle around in the shadows so that he wouldn't see me. But Maman tried to shield me.
We were both glad when he died, although we couldn't admit that to the strait-laced French community in which we lived. His family ignored us, insisting that it was my mother who had driven him to drink. And there was no-one to take our part, for Maman had moved to father's village when they married. Anyway, I was ten when we came to Paris.
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