Grand Lies by JC Hawke

 

Prologue

Nina

Ten years old

Whore.

That’s what they’d call her. She wasn’t ever Sara, Mrs Anderson, or Mummy as she was to me.

“Whore.” The word falls from his lips as if it is poison on his tongue, seeping through the paper-thin walls and into my impressionable ears. At the age of ten, I knew right from wrong. I knew not to get into strangers’ cars and to look both ways when crossing the road. But still, I wouldn’t allow myself to believe the rancid words he’d spit at her—even when the truth in them was easy to see.

My music plays through my headphones, and I spin, feeling weightless. I should go, leave the house and not come back until they are gone. But it’s got cold out, and my leggings and cardigan are the only clean clothes I have.

My music calms me, making all the bad in the house quiet for a little while. It’s when the shouting and banging starts that I turn up the volume, drowning out my mother’s cries. One day I will help her, but I am just a kid. I learnt the hard way not to interfere when it comes to her houseguests. It only ends painfully for me, and the three hospital admissions have only led to social services trying to take me from her.

I don’t want to go, but I don’t necessarily want to stay either.

A loud thudding penetrates through my headphones, and my body goes rigid. I swallow down the fear in my throat and pinch my eyes tighter together. Don’t be a hero, Nina. Don’t be a hero.

I continue to dance in the small confinement of my room, ignoring the pain in my mother’s voice.

I spin.

“Enough!”

Thud.

“Stop!”

Spin.

Thud.

Spin.

“STO—”

I pull the headphones from my ears, rushing out of my bedroom door on shaky legs. My heart pounds in my chest, but I don’t stop, even when everything inside me tells me to leave. Run! Go down the stairs and out the front door, Nina.

I have to help her—nobody else will—even if it hurts me.

I’ve walked into my mother’s bedroom twice in the years she has brought them here, and both times I ended up in the hospital. My broken wrist was unbearable and not something she could hide even if she tried to.

My nose was left broken for an entire week before she allowed me back to school. Maggie, my best friend’s mum, noticed the minute she saw me and drove me to the hospital. I had a broken nose and a mild concussion. It was already starting to heal, but it meant a visit from my social workers.

Both occasions were the same man. Although my mother sleeps with multiple men, she doesn’t always sleep with men like him. Some of them look at me with pity in their eyes before they go to her room.

I grasp the door handle with no plan, quickly turning the knob. I open the door and let it crash into the wall.

“Get off her!” I shout, my fists clenched by my sides.

His hands are around her throat. She looks purple. Her eyes are glazed, and I can see syringes scattered next to them on the bedside table.

My eyes come back to hers, red-rimmed and wide. I need her to give me a sign to tell me what to do.

I get nothing; it’s as if she has given up.

“Get off of her!” I shout again.

His hands release from her neck, and he stands. I spin away as he tucks himself into his trousers, and as soon as I hear his boots thudding on the hardwood, I run to my mother’s side.

“Leave the cunt to die,” he spits at me from the doorway.

My hands shake as I smooth my mother’s hair. I don’t dare look at him.

He will leave. He will leave.

Please leave.

“I said, leave the cunt to die!” His hand fists my hair, dragging me from the bed.

“Nina,” my mother croaks.

I scream out in pain, feeling the roots of my hair clinging to my scalp.

He pulls me to the top of the stairs, hanging me over the top step by my hair. “I don’t pay for a little brat to interrupt me. Fucking apologise!”

No.

He lurches my body forward, and I force my hands out to save myself, but he doesn’t let me go, wrenching me back by my hair again. “Apologise!” he grunts.

I shake my head once, and then I am floating. In the seconds before my face hits the wooden steps, I pinch my eyes closed and pray it will knock me out—anything to take me away from this hell.

I hear him leave and my mother’s cries. Her red dressing gown brushes my cheek as she steps over me and rushes for the door. I pull myself up and sit on the bottom step, adrenaline the only thing keeping me upright.

I did it.

I protected her.

“What were you thinking?!” my mother cries. “Are you going to pay the bills this week? Keep the house heated?!” She stands in front of me, her hair a mess and her eyes wild. I look just like her, but I hope to be everything she isn’t when I grow up.

“Get up!” She pulls on my arm, and I hiss.

“Ow, Mum, that hurts.”

“You know nothing about pain, little girl. One day you’ll grow up and realise the real world isn’t a fucking fairy tale. It’s about time you started learning.”

She drags me to the kitchen and over to the front door. “You think you can be big and brave?” She pushes me over the threshold, sending me tumbling to the asphalt. My knees sting as they scrape along the cold gravel. “Then you find the money for the bills. I can’t feed the both of us. You forget that you need me more than I need you, Nina. It’s about time you grew up!”

“Mum!” I panic.

The door slams shut, and I shake my head, wiping the stray tear from my cheek and pulling myself up off the dirty ground.

She thinks money will help us survive, but what she doesn’t see is that what she is doing to earn it is slowly killing us both.

It was much later in life that I learnt to leave before she could hurt me.