Love Me or Leave Me.

Part 2.

"I'll have whatever you're having." Gwendolyn smiled in return. 

Mildred pulled a jacket on before leaving their room and Gwendolyn exhaled forcefully.  "You idiot, Gwendolyn." She muttered, deciding to go and take a hot shower to relieve her stress. 

They spent the night eating their food and studying together, the little boombox playing Mildred's mixture. 

Gwendolyn looked at her watch and saw that it was almost 2am. "Wow, we'd better go to sleep." She laughed as Mildred yawned. 

Luckily, they were both in their pyjamas so they packed everything away and settled down to go to sleep. 

"Goodnight, Gwen." Mildred whispered. 

"Night, Millie." Gwendolyn replied and they both fell asleep rather quickly.

It was only two hours later when Gwendolyn was woken up by Mildred. She was shrieking and begging someone called 'Edmund' to stop. "She's having a bad dream." Gwendolyn muttered, not knowing what to do for the best.

"Edmund! Ed… please don't hurt me!" Mildred screamed, thrashing about. 

Gwendolyn shot out of bed and went over to her, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her gently. "Millie...Millie, wake up!" She said loudly so she could wake her up. 

The brunette gasped and opened her eyes, still thrashing around, trying to throw Gwendolyn off. 

"Hey...hey! It's me, Gwendolyn." She said calmly. "It's me. You're safe." She whispered. Mildred began to sob, covering her face with her hands. 

"Shh. Don’t cry. It's ok. Do you want a cuddle?" She asked, not knowing what to do. Mildred nodded, wiping her eyes. 

Gwendolyn climbed into bed with Mildred and wrapped her arms around her. "Do you want to talk about it?" She asked quietly. 

Mildred hesitated before beginning to talk. "I'm an orphan. My mother was an alcoholic and gave me up. I was in and out of foster homes for most of my childhood. Then I met Edmund. He was never my biological brother but our social worker fudged the paperwork to say that we were. We went through several homes, each one as horrible as the last. Then we finally met this couple. They seemed really nice and wanted nothing more to make us happy." She said quietly, breathing in shakily to prepare herself for what she was about to say next. 

"About a month into us living with them, they took us down to the basement and they had a puppet theatre set up down there. It was the best thing ever, there was a stage and everything. But what we didn't realise was we were going to be the puppets and people - mostly older men, were paying to come and watch us perform. Our Foster parents were putting out classified adverts in the newspapers under a fake name. It was ok at first, we'd just sing and dance for them, but then, they started to make us...to make us perform acts on each other. Acts of a sexual nature…even though he wasn't my real brother, it felt so so wrong. And this continued for months, we were trapped in this pedophile ring. And then one day, Edmund just snapped and murdered the Foster parents and threatened to kill me too if I didn't run away. So I did, I ran to the social workers office and stayed outside there all night until they arrived in the morning and told them everything. The rest is a blur, I spent a lot of time in an orphanage. I've still not seen Edmund since that night when I was 12." She sighed, not able to look up at Gwendolyn. 

Gwendolyn was astonished. She couldn't believe that she had been through so much and still ended up here, at college. She was so proud of her. "Mildred, I'm so sorry you had to go through all of that. It's so awful and I can't even imagine how you must have been and still are affected."