Colour of Despair {Les Miserables}

Prologue

My life wasn't perfect. I lived with my Papa in a nice house in Montfermiel. It was just the two of us. My poor mama had died delivering her second child. My little brother then died of small pox at the age of seven. We were poor but we got by. I had no pretty clothes, no nice toys to play with and no friends.

I had no motherly figure in my life until I was fourteen when my Papa married again. The woman was a widow and had been left alone with her two children when her husband died. I didn't like her. She was very strict and would hit me with a stick if I was bold. She never hit her precious sons. They were much too special, apparently.

I despised my new brothers. I remember I once had an old rag doll that had belonged to my mama. They stole it from me and sold it for a bag of sweets, which they didn't share with me. They often told lies about me to our parents, just to watch me get beaten.

Perhaps this is why I began to leave the house more often. I had no friends to go to, so I decided to go outside and make some new ones.

This was easier said than done. At the age of eighteen, I had still found no one. My brothers would taunt me and then go out and play with their own friends.

One day, I was sitting alone close to where my brothers were playing. I was reading one of my father's books that I had stolen from his study. One of the of their friends suddenly sat beside me. His name was Felix Thenardier. At that age, he was very handsome and many girls fancied him. His family owned the only Inn for miles. It was a pleasant place to be. I knew this because my father took the family there for Christmas dinner each year. His father had passed away and soon Felix would take over and run the Inn himself.

He talked to me for a long time and when it became dark he walked me home. Every day, for many, many months he came to my house and we would go for a walk, or explore the streets of Paris. We became very close friends and soon after I turned nineteen, he began courting me.

He would bring various gifts and trinkets to my house, or would come for tea with my parents. They liked him, but my father still didn't trust him enough to let him marry me. For a while, I admit, I was very disappointed and I hated my father for not letting me marry Felix.

That all changed the day Felix's mother passed away. It meant that he would have to take over the family business. He asked me if I would like to run the Inn with him and I was the happiest woman alive. I was so stupid that I thought my father had given us his blessing to get married. How wrong I was.

On the night of the grand opening, I stayed with Felix at the Inn. My family did not know, but I didn't care. The next morning, my stepmother beat me again for staying away all night and my father told me that he had not given Felix permission to marry me.

I was very angry at Felix for lying to me and I didn't speak to him for three months. I watched as the Inn became more rundown and horrible. I watched as countless drunk men and whores walked in and out of the building in the dead of the night. I never wanted to see Felix again, but it was not to be.

My stepmother and I found out that I was pregnant and then I was in trouble. My father, a usually kind man, went into a fit of rage, storming into the Inn and bringing Felix to the house, demanding that he marry me at once. I no longer wanted to marry him, but I had no choice. My father did not want such shame to be brought to the family.

And so I married Felix Thenardier one month later. It was a very quick and quiet ceremony, with only my family present. My father and stepmother moved out of Montfermiel and I moved into the inn. Felix tried to be good to me, but soon he began drinking with the other horrible men who entered the Inn. I decided I would have to take care of myself, and my unborn child, alone.

My name is Helena Thenardier and this is my story.