I looked up to see him looking at his wife with a furious expression on his face.
“I’ve heard enough of this shit,” he growled, then softened his tone when he turned his attention to me. “Don’t let them bully you, love. If you want to be there, you’re welcome. If not, I’m sure they’ll survive.”
“Daddy!”
“Don’t ‘Daddy’ me, young lady,” Gareth snapped at his daughter, and my eyes went wide at this unusual turn of events.
In general, Gareth did not snap at anyone. He was mild-mannered and avoided confrontation like the plague. Whenever Mum and Rebecca had a go at me when I was younger, he never said a thing. Truth be told, he usually couldn’t leave the room quickly enough.
Granted, he was leaving now, but not before he’d spoken his mind.
“I’m paying for this shindig, so if you want all those bells and whistles, you’ll do what I’m asking of you and respect your sister for once, for God’s sake.”
Then he stormed out, and I was left with the uncomfortable silence that followed.
“Great,” Rebecca said when she was sure Gareth had really left. “You know you really?—”
Mum’s hand shot out to squeeze Rebecca’s wrist, reminding me of the way Lottie communicated with me when I needed to cease and desist one of my verbal tirades, which was strange, since Rebecca did not have the same difficulties as me with reading social cues.
“So. Of course, you’ll come to the wedding,” Mum said to me through a forced smile. “It’s not for two months, so you’vegot plenty of warning. We’re family. We’reyourfamily. You wouldn’t forget that, would you, Victoria? Not after everything I’ve done for you.”
This was another favourite of my mother’s sayings:after everything I’ve done for you. It was relatively effective. My mother had sacrificed a lot to have me and to raise me. On top of that sacrifice, I hadn’t been an easy child, not by a long way. Then again, after the age of six when I stopped talking altogether, I didn’t really bother Mum with meltdowns and such, as they were all conducted silently, for the most part.
But by then, I was labelled asa problem. This was compounded by the constant pressure from teachers to have me assessed—these calls were studiously ignored by Mum as she didn’t want to “pander to my difficult ways,” believing it would only exacerbate them.
Everything I’d learned since being diagnosed as an adult would suggest otherwise, but there was no point confronting Mum with that information.
“If you require me to be there, then I will be there.”
Rebecca rolled her eyes. “God, anyone would think we were asking you to drink acid. It’s a party. It’s going to be a laugh. Not that you’ve ever had a laugh in your life.”
I cleared my throat and decided not to address the “it’s going to be a laugh” comment. I wasn’t sure how an event featuring a man who had sexually assaulted me marrying my sister who hated me was going to bea laugh, but then again, I had long since given up trying to understand the way Rebecca’s mind operated.
I looked down at my tea and realised I hadn’t even taken a sip. I would have tried, but the stress of the last few minutes would have prevented me from swallowing it anyway. I looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall and then back at Mum. It was difficult for me sometimes to gauge how long interactionsshould go on for. At work, I had Lottie there to guide me on this, but of course, Lottie wasn’t here now. I was not enjoying this interaction at all, and I doubted Mum or Rebecca were either. I’d been here for sixteen minutes now, which I knew was short, but we seemed to have discussed all the salient points, and I wanted to go home.
I cleared my throat. “If that’s everything to be discussed, then I’ll leave.”
“You haven’t even drunk your tea!” Mum’s voice was pitched high with indignation.
Maybe I had misjudged the required time frame. Lottie and Abdul had told me to be more open about my difficulties so that people understood when I did something that could be interpreted as aberrant or rude, so I took a deep breath and explained.
“I can’t actually swallow fluids or solids during a period of stress,” I told Mum, to explain my lack of tea drinking and eliminate the appearance of rudeness.
“Why the hell are you so stressed?” Mum’s voice pitched even higher, and I bit my lip to stop myself from replying honestly, which was the only way I would have been able to reply. “This is your family home, and you’ve popped in for a cup of tea. What’s there to be stressed about?”
I pulled my lips in between my teeth and bit down to stop my reply since I had the feeling it would only make Mum angrier. In fact, anything I said seemed to inflame the situation. Even trying to explain that I wasn’t being rude by not drinking tea had only made things worse. A lot worse.
“Let’s cut to the chase, now that Dad’s out of the room, shall we?” Rebecca cut in, and I turned to her. She had a calculating look in her eyes. “Victoria, you need to pay for my dress, the flowers I want, and the booze. Dad’s talking about shelling out for a few glasses of champagne and then making everyone go to apaying bar.” Rebecca grimaced. “I can’t ask my mates to pay for their drinks at my wedding. It would be mortifying.”
I blinked at her. “I thought your friends were all wealthy?”
My father may not have been the best in terms of emotional support or even acknowledgement when it came to me, but he did pay child support. A lot of child support. In addition to owning the house Mum currently lived in, he’d also paid the exorbitant fees for my boarding school. As for the additional child support money, Mum had spent most of it on herself and her other daughter. This meant that Rebecca had also gone to posh boarding schools, and, not being as unlikeable as I was (Rebecca may have been a raving bitch to me, but she could certainly turn on the charm when she needed to), she made a lot of friends there. Then made even more friends when she attended Durham University.
So, all Rebecca’s friends were affluent in the extreme. They could easily afford their own drinks, whereas my stepfather, who worked hard as an accountant but only had a moderate income, could likely not afford all-night champagne.
“It’s not that they can’t afford their drinks,” Rebecca said through her teeth. “It’s how embarrassing it would be to ask them to pay. I’d be completely humiliated.”
“Gareth does not understand the situation,” Mum put in. “He expects Becky to wear a dress costing amaximumof one thousand pounds.”
