I lay awake for the next few hours, staring at the ceiling and silently seething.
When I finally did fall asleep, I was less than impressed when, what felt like only moments later, even though it was in fact the next morning, there was a series of loud, incessant bangs on my door.
Vicky was still out of it in her small ball on the bed, and I didn’t want to wake her, so I moved my big carcass off the mattress with as little disturbance to her as possible and hurried downstairs to tell whoever it was to shut the fuck up.
What greeted me when I pulled open the door was a very pissed-off Ollie, flanked by a worried-looking Lottie and a visibly upset Margot.
“Where is she?” Ollie growled, attempting to push past me to get into the cabin.
I stopped him with a hand to his chest, pushing him out onto the porch.
“She’s sleeping, arsehole,” I clipped. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“That awful woman rang me,” Margot said, her voice shaking slightly. “She was ranting and raving about the police and something to do with Vicky, and how I had to stop her pressing charges. Honestly, she sounded certifiable. Did something happen?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and let out a long breath. “Listen, why don’t you lot come back later. I’ll talk to Vics, and if she’s up to it, then?—”
“That’s my sister in there, mate,” Ollie said in his bloody Duke of Fuckingham voice, the aristocratic one he liked to wheel out to make lesser mortals do his bidding. “If she’s been hurt, then I want to see her right fucking now.”
“Oh yeah?” I felt my temper rising. “If she’s your sister, then where the hell have you been for the last two decades?”
Ollie blinked. “What are you talking about? I’ve protected Vicky her whole?—”
“Bullshit.”
“What?”
“Bull.Shit.If you’ve always protected her, then why did her mother tell me yesterday that, and I quote, ‘She’s always bruised easily’?”
I heard Margot suck in a shocked breath, but they had to hear the truth they’ve clearly always ignored.
“Why was she never assessed for Autism as a child? And whythe fuckdidn’t any of you know about the wedding yesterday? She was going to go on her own, for fuck’s sake. God knows whatwould have happened to her if I hadn’t pulled that fucker off her.”
“What?” barked Ollie, his face losing colour. “Who did you pull off her?”
“The goddamn groom, that’s who. And apparently, it wasn’t the first time this bastard had assaulted her. Where were you when he did it to her two years ago?”
“Christ,” breathed Ollie. “Two years ago… that was when she went totally into herself for weeks, remember, Mum? She kept working, but beyond that, she was a complete ghost. She never told us what the matter was.”
“You must have had some idea about how her mum and sister treat her?” I said in disbelief.
“That woman! She…” Margot shrugged helplessly. “She was so awful. I always thought it was best to just avoid her. And when Hugh told me I had to look after his love child in the summer holidays, I wasn’t best pleased. It took me a while to…” Margot swallowed. “It took me longer than it should have to get to know Vicky.”
I sighed. “She thinks she’s a burden to all of you. She overheard a lot of your arguments with her dad when he brought her to Buckingham Manor. I’m not saying you weren’t right to be angry, but?—”
“But she was just a child,” Margot finished for me, openly crying now. “Don’t you think I know that? I realised after a couple of weeks how badly I buggered it up when she first came to the Manor, how much she needed me. But by that stage, she was so withdrawn. She didn’t speak. At all. And when I tried to get her assessed, that woman hit the roof.”
“If you know how bad her family is, why do you let her see them?”
“I didn’t know,” Ollie defended.
“But, did you ever ask her, Ollie?” Lottie asked quietly. “I didn’t know about Vicky’s other family, and that they were… problematic. But I’ve known something was wrong.”
“We’re getting off-topic here,” Ollie said through gritted teeth. “I want to know what the fuck is going to be done about this bloke who assaulted my sister.”
“We’re not off-topic, you prick!” I shouted because quite frankly, I’d had enough. “She’s been emotionally and physically abused by her family since she was a child, and you lot have done your very best to bloody well ignore it. This is just the latest in a long line of shit that’s happened to her, which you haven’t bothered yourself with. I punched that bloke in the face, and the police have hopefully arrested him by now, if that bitch’s phone call to Margot is anything to go by. There’s not much more we can do about him. And you’re not all barging in here and upsetting Vicky. She’s mine today. I want to watch shit about hedgehogs and de-cluttering programmes with her on telly, make her poached eggs on toastexactlythe way she likes them, and then show her how to weld. So you can all bugger off.”
“You’ll show me how to weld?” Vicky’s voice sounded from behind me, and I closed my eyes slowly as I moved back from the door. She was standing a few paces back, totally swamped in my flannel shirt with the pyjama bottoms dragging along the ground.
