Life's Great Happiness (A Les Miserables FanFiction)

The Prostitute And The Centre

Marguerite Boisvert was a very beautiful girl, she always had been, even starvation couldn't dull her stunning features. She had been a beautiful baby, wide eyed and small, with a smile so large it could brighten the eyes of her father who had been in a depressed daze since his wife's death.

Childbirth proved too painful for the weak woman.

Marguerite grew to be a beautiful child, her breathtaking smile and stunning blue eyes were all given to the girl by her mother who had been a very beautiful woman herself.

It was a natural beauty which possessed Marguerite, one that could not diminish even after her father's death. Suicide it was, drowned himself when Marguerite was 14. The tragedy and pain was etched into her eyes but her face remained flawless still, with or without a smile she was prepossessing.

Her family had never been wealthy, lower middle-class at the most with her father's job but his death caused life to crack and crumble right in front of Marguerite's eyes. She was poor, homeless, alone, sad to an extent she never thought possible, she was in pain with no family to speak of, she had no skills and who in their right mind would hire a 14 year old girl?

It took Marguerite 2 years to find an answer.

For those two year Marguerite had lived on her feet, walking or running to where she needed to go, she lived alone on the streets stealing from anyone she saw with something she needed. She had sold all she had before she started to steal, she had beautiful long black hair like silk, she'd cut it off, sold it for 11 which she then wasted on food having not eaten in five weeks, She had continued to sell her hair whenever it grew.

It was when she was 16 that Marguerite found a job, her eyes had flared defiantly when first offered, she had been pushed to the ground, mocked and robbed of what she had stolen that day and laughed at more, she had been pushed against a wall before she agreed.

Being a prostitute was more trouble that what it was worth but Marguerite didn't have much of a choice, she was a 19 year old girl with no skills in reading or writing, she had been on the streets too long to have any real worth somewhere else. 4 years being a prostitute and yet she was no better than she was when she was 16, but why did Marguerite continue to be one? Because it was something to hold onto, something real she had that wasn't made up in her mind, Marguerite hadn't had anything since she was 14, she had been alone but now she had all she wanted, men and more men. Old men, young men, harbor rats and alley cats and every type of scum, loor men, rich men, leaders of the land.

'See 'em with their trousers off they're never quite as grand.' Marguerite muttered to herself as she fixed her hair after a particularly rough customer, it seemed to her that the richer they were the harder they hit.

'You alright?' Béatrice, an older prostitute who had been working a the better half of 10 years, she was indeed old and with the right amount of makeup she was pretty but her eyes were too large and her teeth too few.

Marguerite shrugged with a smile, the bruise on her cheek hurting more than she could describe but she had worse so she kept quiet.

'5 francs for that one, I think I will brave whatever pain it has cause me, a feast is better than a whine.'

Béatrice nodded with a fleeting smile, her large eyes shined with something akin to pity and Marguerite almost scoffed, she had seen the older woman sport a badly broken arm and yet she was pitying the younger girl for a bruise?

'I'm heading to the main street.' Marguerite had told Béatrice the next afternoon.

'I wouldn't,' The older woman warned. 'there's some sort of protest going on, there's quite a crowd.'