6. What’s there to be stressed about?
What’s there to be stressed about?
Vicky
“Wedding?” I managed to force out as my eyes went wide with horror.
Please don’t tell me Rebecca was going to marry Darrell.
“Yes, wedding,” Rebecca said with a fake smile. “You know, that ceremony people have in the course of a normal committed relationship ?”
I wasn’t great at reading subtext in conversations, but even I knew what Rebecca was getting at with that comment—that I’d never had anything even approaching a normal relationship, and likely never would.
Gareth put a steaming mug of tea in front of me. It was the incorrect strength for this time of day, but then, Gareth was not in possession of my tea colour chart, so I couldn’t realistically expect him to get it right.
I unclenched my fists enough to put my cold hands around it.
“I see,” was all I could manage to get out past my tight throat.
“And you’re my sister, so you’ll have to be a part of it all,” Rebecca told me begrudgingly.
“Yes, we’ll need you to be normal for a day if you can manage that small favour,” Mum said, and then we all jumped when Gareth’s chair scraped back in a sudden movement.
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’ve got plenty of warning. We’re family. We’re your family. 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 as a 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 be a 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 interactions should 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 a paying 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 a maximum of one thousand pounds.”
“That’s not even going to buy the bloody veil,” Rebecca muttered.
“A wedding dress is a very poor investment,” I put in, thinking this information would be considered helpful.
Judging by how red Rebecca’s face turned, it was not.
“The ROI is abysmal,” I explained, hoping to get my point across without her head exploding.
And I was actually telling the truth. I’d never understood how anyone could spend tens of thousands of pounds on a dress they only wore for one day.
“The re-sale in general only yields approximately a third of the market value for the dress once it’s been worn. ”
“Why the fuck are you talking ROI and market value, you freak?” Rebecca’s face was a really ugly shade of puce now.
Clearly, further explanations on the economics of the wedding industry were not welcome at this point.
Mum sighed. “Victoria, just give us the money and stop being difficult. We can’t afford it, and Gareth’s not changing his mind.”
I frowned. “But what about the allowance I pay you?”
Mum’s eyes went wide, and she shushed me, looking over my shoulder, presumably, to check that Gareth hadn’t snuck back into the kitchen.
“I thought I told you not to ever mention that.”
“But it should be more than enough to?—”
“I’ve spent it, okay?” she snapped, and Rebecca sat back in her chair with a mutinous expression on her face and her arms crossed over her chest.
After Dad died, his child support payments stopped.
I was, at that point, twenty-three, so technically they should have stopped five years prior.
But I think my father knew that continued financial support kept Mum from harassing me, and if he didn’t carry on paying, she would simply use me to extract the money anyway.
He might not have been the most interested father, but he did tell me that he didn’t want Mum “fucking me up any more royally than she already had,” so it was easier to keep her paid off.
Dad’s funeral was the first time Mum approached me about money. When she could corner me, away from Margot and Ollie, who had very kindly included me in the event as if I were family, when really, I was nothing of the sort, she told me that I needed to continue the payments now that Dad was dead.
My inheritance from my father was very modest compared to that of his real children.
It only really lasted until I was earning for myself after university.
So I had to pay my mother’s allowance out of my own earnings.
To be honest, it seemed to be the most expedient option.
I never really bought anything for myself, nor did anything, so I didn’t actually require unlimited wealth.
Then, of course, I started working at Felix’s company, and my income sky-rocketed, so I simply forgot about the payments to Mum.
But they were substantial. So substantial that drinks and a wedding dress shouldn’t be an issue if she’d saved any at all.
But then, looking around at all the clutter, I could guess where the money went.
“You owe me.” Mum hissed as she grabbed my arm.
I tried to flinch away, but her grip was way too tight.
“You know you owe me. This is pennies for you, and your sister has had a hard time recently.”
The hard time Mum was referring to was Rebecca's firing from her employment at a high-end fashion boutique for “borrowing” the clothes.
Borrowing was the term Rebecca used for it; the boutique termed it “theft.” She was furious about it at the time, saying that she was a “walking advertisement” and that her Insta following alone would be worth the price of the few pieces that she “borrowed.”
I suspected that it was more than a few pieces, seeing as Rebecca rarely wore anything twice, and it was nearly always designer.
I really needed Mum to let go of my arm, and I knew the only way that was going to happen was if I agreed to her terms.
“Okay,” I said and then breathed a sigh of relief when Mum released her grip.