Um, hi there, this is the new chapter. Thank you all for the reviews. I'd like to thank anonymous reviewers: isabella, vayle, ixi-shaj for their kindness and support, for the encouragement and for reading my little story.

After two more clients I was nearing the end. I had not seen their faces, I could not gather their presence. I was a piece of wood.

I sobbed but I didn't cry because tears would clean my face. I fell to the floor and shamefully emptied what I had nibbled at dinner. I looked at the puddle at my feet and almost saw my reflection in it. I couldn't recognize myself.

Anabelle hurried inside.

'You have another one…Are you alright, Mary?'

'Yes, but I can't take anyone anymore,' I told her pointing at the puddle.

'I understand…'

Did she feel sorry for me or did she think they wouldn't like the smell? She was very young. I never asked myself whether she even knew what this was all about. I just assumed an 11 year old girl doesn't think about these things, even if she sees and hears them all around her.

I wanted to sleep and rest so I could wake up early and…take my leave.

After many hours I fell asleep but I only had nightmares about madam Zoë choking me with a corset while other men watched my humiliating nakedness.

I think I woke up around noon, hungry and thirsty. Claudia had brought in some tea in the morning that was quite cold now and two green apples. I swallowed it all in haste, coughing and holding my head between my hands in pain.

The tea had an acid taste to it. It reminded me of some medicine my mother would give me every time she thought I had hay fever.

An hour later Claudia came in with two packages, looking mildly happy.

'Sleeping Beauty has honoured us with her awakening. I have brought gifts for the princess.'

'Oh, stop…I shall go back to my eternal sleep,' I said sinking my head in my pillow.

'We shall have none of that,' she said sprinting to my bed. But when she saw my ghastly, pale face her smile vanished and she touched my forehead worried.

'Is everything alright?'

'No.'

'It couldn't have been that bad. At least you've passed the biggest hardship,' she reasoned.

'It was worse.'

'How many did you have?'

'Three.'

'Only three?! That's nothing!'

'Nothing?' I protested getting up in one elbow. 'It's a nightmare.'

'I know…but in time three will seem nothing,' she assured me. 'It is like drinking. At first you find it distasteful, but in time you get used to its taste.'

'This is not a vice,' I pointed out.

'No, but it is a habit.'

'I intend to leave,' I said, hiding my eyes from hers.

'You will come back.'

'What makes you think that?'

'You'd feel ashamed and stained, you'd return to the place where it all started. You couldn't live with yourself,' she confessed, probably speaking of her own experience as well.

I felt horrified at the approaching future.

'Maybe my purchases will cheer you up,' she said bringing a package and putting it in my lap.

'What is it?'

'It's a new dress, for you. I hope you do not mind, I bought it with your charge.'

'My charge?'

'The money you made last night. I wanted to wake you this morning, but you were sleeping so soundly…so I decided to go buy you a dress myself. I hope you like it.'

I peered at her confused. I felt slightly offended. This was the first money I made on my own and she took it without consideration and bought what she thought I wanted.

It's true I had little to no clothes but I probably would have bought something else. Still, I appreciated the gesture…

I opened the package and saw a slender, shabby, comfortable green dress inside.

'Thank you, Claudia…'

'It was the least I could do for my new friend,' she said beaming. No one had called me their friend before, but the circumstances were a tad…satirical.

'I would have bought you a fan as well, but I needed to give part of it to madam Zoë. You know, you tore up the dress she gave you last night. You're new here so she didn't take much but you should keep in mind she is not very forgiving. You should…not repeat it.'

'I won't, since I am to leave.'

'You're still convinced you shall?' she inquired getting up.

I did not answer. I liked the days there, not the nights. The days were pleasant and peaceful. The house was enveloped in silence and I spent many hours wondering around or talking to Claudia. I would have stayed for the days, but unfortunately every day had a night.

'I…don't know,' I confessed.

'Did you drink your medicine?' Claudia asked me inspecting the tray she had left.

'Medicine?' Did she then think I did have hay fever?

'In your tea. You have to take it every morning.'

'Why?'

'Don't worry. Only for a month or two. Then you shan't need it anymore.'

'What does it do?' I asked.

'Well…we wouldn't want you with bearing, would we?' she said trying to laugh but failed miserably.

I looked at my stomach and curled up in sadness. 'Oh…how terrible…'

In a way, I suspected it, but I never thought I would be given such a thing. And then – maybe if I was with child, that man, whose name I did not even know, would marry me, feeling it like a duty. I wouldn't have minded if he had felt it like a duty. I wouldn't have minded if he hated the child. I would have married him anyway, just to stay close to him.

I wouldn't have cared at all.

But if he had come here he probably did not believe in duty, certainly not in duty towards me.

Then – I understood something.

'I need take it only for a month or two? Then, afterwards…I shan't be able to…'

'Have children? No,' Claudia said shortly making the bed.

I wanted to ask more, to protest and cry and complain and shout but I knew from her movements and her face she did not wish to discuss it and that this would remain quiet between us, for as long as we were in that house. She was telling me, silently, that if I wanted to protest, she wasn't the person to listen.

And I complied.


All day long I thought about children. Whenever I saw Anabelle my heart churned. Her smile was poisonous.

I saw young boys carry punnets across the street. They were clad in mud and they were happy.

Of course in this house, in this position I wasn't allowed the comfort of a child, nor would it be advised or practical. I knew I couldn't maintain a child, I couldn't offer it a good home, even if I left the house.

I did not wish to be a mother, but I liked to think I could be one. I liked to think that, if I had no meaning in life, I could at least make life.

If I stayed here, I wouldn't be allowed that privilege.

Just like the night before, I asked myself where to go. I thought, amused, that I would always want to leave and I would never. I would decide every day to leave and never return but who knew if I could follow up that decision?

I was just beginning, I had barely dwelt a week there.

There was nothing perverse or grotesque in the act itself. The only perversity was performed by madam Zoë, when she dressed me and painted me.

And I continued the perversity.


I always kept him in my heart, the first man. I didn't see him again, not for many months.

I wondered if he would ever come back, but I didn't have time to wonder too much.

After the first month I was put to help at the laundry and so I filled the wonderful, peaceful days with hard work, instead of talking to Claudia, or idling about.

I had to boil the water in a large tub. Then with a wooden stick I would put the nightgowns, petticoats, frocks, sheets, dresses and all sorts of articles in it. Then I had to cut up the grease and scald it in with the clothes. Sometimes, we added certain essences in the washing so that the smell would cover any other blemishes the woman had.

When the water cooled off a bit I scrubbed each and every piece of cloth. My hands were always red and burning.

At night I continued to do what I was asked. I looked worse and worse in that terrible paint, but I did not complain.

When I managed to save some pennies I went out in the streets to find a book shop.

I only managed to walk some miles before running back ashamed. I couldn't show my face outside. I could only walk in the open court and watch the clothes dry.

I asked Claudia to buy things for me, but I never asked her to buy books. I saved that pleasure for myself. I wondered though, when I would have it.

Claudia promised me in time I would grow accustomed to some things, but I never did.

I never did accept the clothes and paint; I couldn't stand lying there with a man and not looking in his eyes, not kissing him. I never kissed another man there again.

And I couldn't stand the loneliness. I couldn't talk to the other girls at the laundry and I didn't have much time with Claudia.

I knew nothing of my sisters…what was left of my family. I wished they'd write me letters, but I knew that was next to impossible. They knew nothing of me, my whereabouts, my situation.

And I couldn't write to them. What could I tell them? They would probably deny my existence if they knew half of it. I wouldn't mind that, but I would have liked to know they were safe and sound.

When I woke up in the mornings, I never looked in the mirror, I only enjoyed looking at my legs. They had many bruises and cuts from where Anabelle had shaved me with a knife, clumsily. I felt a silly pride in seeing those wounds, as if I had been in a strange and heroic battle with France.

But sometimes there were other wounds.

In my third month, everything ran in a different course and I started receiving different sorts of men. Some were so very drunk that they couldn't stand up and I would just let them sleep next to me as I searched through their clothes curiously, hoping to find out who they were.

I never did, however.

Yet some were violent and brash from too much drinking and handled me carelessly, yanking and snatching, not minding their weight or their dirtiness and sometimes I was left with marks.

When I first complained of this to madam Zoë she laughed and told me it was my fault for not having enough will to impose myself as a woman.

Yet when I pushed and rejected the man, she scolded me for being uncouth and unreasonable, frigid, disobedient.

One night, I was sitting on the bed, watching one of the customers walking back and forth agitated, playing with his lapels. I saw he was worried and that nothing I said could alleviate him. But I did speak.

'Sir? Are you alright? Do you wish me to…'

He didn't say a word, but he sat down next to me and put his head in his hands.

'I'm sorry,' I mumbled, 'for your distress.'

He looked at me as if I was his mother, no one else. So, I opened up my arms and he laid his head on my shoulder and he wept for a very long time.

After a while he told me he was going to war and that I couldn't stop him, no matter what. I nodded silently and caressed his hair. I could feel his sorrow and I did feel like someone dear to him.

They were like abandoned toys. The way a little spoilt child leaves his toys in the middle of the room; that's how they were. They wanted someone to take them back up on the mantelpiece.

There were moments when I wanted to tell them my life story.

I wanted to tell them that I had no family and my sisters were far away and I had nothing anymore, because I had chosen so. But every time I felt like confessing I thought they would snigger and never believe me.

Some might have, but then nothing I said could have made their grief easier.

Once, a man told me as he was falling asleep next to me that he was looking for a wife. He said he had found a charming young lady but that she was herself engaged heart and soul to a young lieutenant. He was downcast from unrequited love. He said that one never achieves happiness in life and that all one can hope for is to at least see it from afar, if one never reaches it.

I told him the lady was lucky to be loved by him and he closed his eyes.

Another time, a young man told me he had fought with his father and would never return home, but they found each other on the corridor; his father had been in another room. They went home together, I suppose.

These people had intertwined lives. And I waited for my own life to be intertwined.

I changed the sheets every morning and they always smelt the same; as if someone had burnt hair on them.

I went to the laundry and looked at the tired physiognomies of other girls washing there, careless of the sun outside, the town, their lives and I wished I could shout at them and tell them they were young and pretty.

When Anabelle took me that night to be dressed I felt something terrible would happen. And indeed, as she applied the paint on my eyes I started sneezing and fell to my knees, but my eye lids would not open.

I could feel my face swelling and until Anabelle could shout for help, I fell into unconsciousness.