“Stop it!” I demanded.

“I hate you!” she screamed, her face red and botchy, the veins in her neck actually standing out where she was so angry and tense. She actually spat in my face, I closed my eyes and let her go, wiping my face with the bottom of my t-shirt as I gritted my teeth.

“I hate you too,” I admitted, it actually felt quite nice to say those words to her. I’d never said that out loud in my life, I’d thought it since I was about seven years old, but I had never spoken the words. I was a little shocked at myself and how much feeling I had put into those words as they left my mouth.

She stopped, her face crumbling slightly as she looked at me, then her hands dropped down to her sides, all traces of emotion gone, her face was hard as stone. “Then leave. We’re nothing to each other, I don’t need your help,” she said quietly.

“I won’t let people hurt you. You’re still my mother. Now tell me what’s happened,” I stated, crossing my arms over my chest, just watching her face, waiting for her to tell me.

She frowned, her eyes dropping down to the floor as she played with her fingers on her broken hand. “It’s nothing,” she said, shaking her head.

I sighed and sat down on the armchair, keeping my eyes on her, not allowing myself to look around the room and see if there were any photos of Sophie around that I could take with me when I left.

“If it’s nothing, then you won’t mind telling me,” I countered, my tone firm and hard, letting her know that I wasn’t leaving here until she told me the guy’s name that did that to her. It was pretty obvious by the clothes that she was wearing – or hardly wearing – that she was back on the game, her pose as she opened the door clearly signalled that she thought I was a punter come for a little afternoon delight.

Instead of getting angry again and shouting like I was expecting, she did something I never thought I would see her do. She sat down on the sofa opposite me and put her head in her hands and cried. I gulped at the sight of it, I’d never seen her cry before. She didn’t ever show any emotions when I was a kid, usually she was too drugged up or drunk to actually ‘feel’ anything, so this was a first for me. I didn’t know what to do, I knew I should comfort her, put my arm around her or something, tell her it’s ok. But I couldn’t find any compassion for her in my body at all. This woman sitting in front of me, was nothing to me, but that didn’t mean I would stand by and let some guy hurt her because he thought he ‘owned’ her.

“Just spit it out, Sharon!” I demanded, using her name because I couldn’t bring myself to call her mom, I needed to stay detached.

She sniffed and wiped at her face, her eyes not meeting mine. “I…… I don’t have a pimp, not anymore, not since…..” she trailed off, shaking her head, wincing slightly.

She didn’t look like she was lying to me, her eyes actually looked scared, terrified even. “So who did this?” I asked, waving my hand at her face and then her arm.

“I….. I …..borrowed some money. I had a little trouble keeping up with the repayments,” she whispered, breaking into another round of sobs.

Oh shit, this was worse than I thought. “Please tell me you borrowed from a bank,” I begged, knowing the answer to that before I even asked, what type of bank would take payment in the form of violence? No respectable bank.

She shook her head and I felt my heart sink. Loan sharks, I really didn’t want to be getting involved in this at all. I mentally added up how much money I could get my hands on. I probably had just over a thousand bucks in the bank, I got paid weekly, if I worked extra hours I could probably get three cars done for next week instead of two. If I didn’t eat properly or go out for a couple of weeks, then I could probably scrape about eighteen hundred bucks together, maybe a little more.

“Who did you borrow from?” I asked, not even wanting to know the answer.

She sniffed and I noticed how her body flinched as she said his name. “Tony Grier.”

Oh shit! I needed to leave. I really didn’t want to get involved in this situation. I needed to get the hell out of this house and pretend that I never even had a mother, that I just arrived with the stork and didn’t have any parents. Tony Grier was the worst person in the world you could owe money to.

His interest rates were through the roof, if you so much as missed one payment then payment was taken in the form of broken bones. His reputation around here was feared, much like Brett’s was, but Brett was more into the business side of things, cars, cons, drugs and ‘protection’. Whereas Tony was more money related, he would take everything she owned, chew her up and spit her out, before selling her to the highest bidder and then doing the same with every member of her family and friends until there was nothing left to take.

I ironically thought about how much simpler this would be if she just had a new pimp that was bashing her around, I could sort that so easily, but this, this was different. Did I really owe her this much?

“How much did you borrow?” I asked, closing my eyes waiting for the answer.

“Two thousand,” she replied, her tone had changed now, it was softer, more pleading, as if she suddenly thought she needed to be nice to me so that I’d help her. She’d done a complete one eighty and now wanted my help judging by the tone of her voice.

I nodded, my body relaxing slightly because it was a fairly achievable target. “I can get it for you within two weeks.”