Prologue
June 1975
In the dead hours of the night, in a classy brothel at Wilson avenue swarming with alcohol and sex, Helen Ipswitch, sleepy-eyed, reluctantly wore her make-up. She was getting ready for her first client for the night, and hopefully her last—she had obliged her manager to do this on a last-time basis after tendering her resignation two days ago.
Motherhood could change a lot, a whole lot more when it came unplanned. Becoming a mother at twenty felt like being thrown into the path of a speeding truck; there was no warning, no chance to brace herself. Although she earned a decent living as a middle-class prostitute, she never got herself to abort the beautiful wonder growing inside her. Her blunt defiance had stunned her colleagues—getting pregnant on the job was bad PR, and bad PR meant no money. It had driven the idiot she called her boyfriend, the man who’d got her pregnant, to walk out on her without so much as a backward glance. He severed all contact with her the moment he realized she wouldn't go through with the abortion he had arranged. How irresponsible! Now she was left with a cute ten month old girl she had kissed goodnight as she lay peacefully asleep in her cot before leaving for work.
She smacked her lips softly as the red lipstick settled perfectly, giving her face a more stunning look. She loved what she saw in the dress mirror standing before her. She closed her make-up kit and threw it into her purse. Still looking at the mirror, she was reminded again how effortlessly beautiful she was, her big dove eyes that held so much charm, her aquiline nose, her tender lips, her deep gold of long hair that tumbled down her shoulders. She was not part of those that used make-up to fill up for something absent, a temporary façade to deceive; she only amplified a little what already was.
As she adjusted the single strap of the little green dress that shrunk far away from her shimmering laps, the door opened and a woman in her mid fifties walked in. She left the door open yet made it invisible to Helen as her broad body, wrapped inside an Arabian dress, made the dimly-lit room look like a squeezed matchbox.
“Lloyd will be here in five minutes,” her manager, popularly known as Madame Hunt by her workers and clients alike, announced, giving Helen a satisfied look-over. “ He’s in the force—police. Top of the bunch. Give him the treat of his life.”
“A cop for retirement huh?” Helen said with a sardonic chuckle.
“Thank you for doing this. I don’t know if I can’t get any other girl like you.” Madame Hunt said, a sullen wistfulness in her voice.
“Sure Madame, you certainly would.” Helen croaked.
She knew Madame Hunt would, it might take some time but Madame’s connections in the web of recruiting young girls for prostitution ran deep and wide. Right now, she thought of raising her daughter, and raising her into a decent woman. Not the woman she had become. And that was the reason she accepted the receptionist job at Wintess End, a hotel that just opened in town. Though the pay was nothing compared to the huge sums Madame Hunt gave her as one of her elite workers, it gave her a sense of fulfillment towards her goal in raising her daughter right. Immorality cannot produce morality.
A sudden feeling to go close to the other woman and rub her massive shoulders in comfort overpowered her. But before she could move her red stilettos, Madame Hunt had whirled around with a satisfied nod of her square head covered with a shawl and squeezed past the door, shutting it behind her. Helen exhaled loudly, as though opening her own reserve of air she'd stored as Madame Hunt sucked in all the air in the room.
She had barely sat on the neatly arranged bed when the door creaked open and her Client entered.
Lloyd.
When she heard Madame Hunt use top of the bunch to describe him, her mind had whipped up a fiftyish old man with saggy beer belly and bald patches of graying hair—she knew promotion in the force—especially the police force—came with a lot of years of hard work, and of course dirty work. What she'd not expected was a drop-dead handsome blond that looked like a model that was cut out of a Calvin Klein advert.
Not bad for retirement, she thought as she got up and struck her most seductive pose ever, placing her unbelievably straight right leg on the bed and running her fingers on her lap.
Lloyd could only drool and feel his knees wobbling. He dashed towards her before he would collapse. Then came the kiss. She seldom kissed her clients except they paid extra for it—and Madam Hunt’s give-him-the-treat-of-his-life speech meant Lloyd had. But It was that kiss, so smelly, so revolting, so unbearable, that made Helen pull away. What the hell had he drunk before coming? The stench — a sickly mix of alcohol, garlic, and something that reeked like a spoiled raw egg — clawed at her throat and nearly made her retch.
“Gosh you stink.” She said, wiping her lips and standing up from the bed.
“What did you just say? You taking the piss?” Lloyd snapped, his temper flaring. “I came here so you could do your bloody job — the one I’ve already paid for. Now get over here and get on with it, bitch.”
“Hey mister, mind your language,” Helen retorted, folding her arms across her breasts. “The token you paid doesn’t give you the license to call me that. Do you hear?”
“Oh fuck that,” Lloyd said with an arrogant wave of his hand. “Bitches are for brothels and brothels are for bitches. What’s the fucking insult in that? That's your identity. Listen, I’m not gonna take this shit anymore, get on here now you fucking whore!”
“Go call your godforsaken mother that!” Helen exploded, her shoulders heaving with anger. How dare this stinking stranger talk to her like that. She was done. She was going to call Madame Hunt to get this skunk out of her bed. As she marched to the dresser where her phone lay, her eyes caught a sight that made her freeze.
“How dare you insult my mother!” Lloyd barked as he stood up, his pistol pointing at her.
Helen threw her hands in the air and bent her head towards the floor, her whole body trembling with fear.
“I, I…I am sorry…I didn’t…”
“Fuck it! You shouldn’t have mentioned my mother bitch! You shouldn’t.”
“Please, I…I have a…ba…”
Lloyd pulled the trigger.
